Phubbing in Workplace: The Effect to Employees’ Work Engagement

Abstract

Employees’ work engagement plays a significant role in enhancing the sustainability and performance of the company in industrial sector. However, phubbing can have a negative impact on employees' work engagement, as it can lead to reduced productivity in the workplace. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive investigation for the impact of phubbing on negative employee outcomes, such as reduced work engagement. The data was collected using a snowball sampling strategy. A total of 221 employees from Indonesia were included as participants in the study, ranging in age from 18 to 39 years (M = 26.9, SD = 3.35). Among the participants, 66% were working in private sector companies, 26% were employed in government offices, and the remaining 32% worked in other sectors. The Generic Scale of Phubbing (Indonesian Version) (15 item, α = 0.91) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-9 (UWES-9) (Indonesian Ver.) (9 item, α = 0.91) were used to measure the variables. The quantitative research method utilized regression analysis via JASP 0.17 for MacOS Catalina to determine the relative strength between two variables. This research indicate that phubbing in workplace negatively influences work engagement on employee. 25.1% of the changes in work engagement on employee is due to phubbing behavior in workplace, and the remaining 74.9% comes from other variables. The higher the tendency of employees to phubbing, the lower their work engagement, vice versa.