Exploring the Multifaceted Link between Motivational Antecedents and Employee Performance through the Lens of Engagement

Abstract

The workforce of any organization is its core asset, which is rare and non-imitable. If it is nurtured, harnessed and engage properly organization can reap a lot of benefits. Organizations operating in the telecom sector of Pakistan are operating in a highly competitive environment. The aim of this study is to empirically the relationship between HRM practices, motivating work designs and employee performance with employee engagement playing the role of the mediator. There are twenty five hundred employees of telecom sector who lives in a geographical area of Islamabad/Rawalpindi. A Cross-sectional data was collected from telecom sector companies operating in Islamabad/Rawalpindi (N = 237). A questionnaire based survey was administered in order to collect the required data. The study unveils that two motivational antecedents, i.e., HRM practices and work designs positively impacts the employee performance and the relationship is also significant. Moreover, the study suggested that employee engagement partially mediated the relationship between HRM practices, work designs and employee performance, i.e., firms that devise HRM practices and flexible work designs to develop, increase or sustain the high level of engagement among their employees that ultimately positively impacts individual performances. Human resources managers should redesign the jobs at entry level, to provide employees with more accurate and timely feedback and also greater autonomy to employees. Secondly, high levels of engagement might be encouraged by implementing HRM investment and expectation enhancing practices. This research has focused the effects of engagement on individual job performance rather than overall performance of the organization which is unprecedented.

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