Employee engagement: linking motivational antecedents, trust in leadership, and turnover intention.

Abstract

Employee engagement is seen as a powerful source of competitive advantage amidst stiff competition. Nevertheless, there are evidences showing that engagement has been declining today. In Thailand, employee turnover becomes one of the critical issues for companies especially if lost employees are key people. Moreover, little theory or empirical observations account for the role of engagement as a means through which organizations can create competitive advantages. This paper builds on Kahn’s (1990) definition to propose engagement as a key mechanism explaining relationships among a variety of organizational factors and turnover intention. Also, this paper introduces trust in leadership as a crucial means through which organizational practices affect engagement. The objective of this study is to investigate whether three distinct organizational practices- motivating work design, HRM practices, and transformational leadership behavior- generate higher level of trust in leaders, and whether such level of trust influences employee engagement that ultimately leads to lower level of turnover intention. This study uses quantitative method based on employee survey from one private company operated in Thailand. The results reveal that when the organization designs jobs to enrich work characteristics and is steered by transformational leaders, this increases the level of trust in leaders, which leads to enhancement of employee engagement. Additionally, winning trust in leaders from employees could directly lower the level of turnover intention. The current investigation contributes to the engagement literature in the context of Thailand workplace, and benefit the management who values the human capital and seeks to improve employee engagement in order to retain their key talent as means for overcoming its counterparts.