Employee Engagement, Antecedents and Turnover Intent in Selected Firms in Uganda

Abstract
Purpose of the study was to find the relationship between employee engagement, its antecedents and turnover intent in selected firms in Uganda. Cross-sectional survey design was employed to examine the relationship between nine HR practices (antecedents), employee engagement and turnover intent using self-administered questionnaires on 1,773 employees from four purposively sampled firms in Kampala, Mukono, and Buikwe districts. Hypotheses were tested using correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. All the nine antecedent variables studied were significantly positively correlated with employee engagement and employee engagement was significantly negatively correlated with turnover intent. The hierarchical regression results shows that only five of the nine antecedents were significant predictors of turnover intent - employee development, compensation fairness, perceived social support, reward/recognition and collaboration. The study found that employee engagement is not a partial mediator between the antecedents and turnover intent because the hierarchical regression analysis shows that after controlling for the antecedents, employee engagement did not contribute unique variance to turnover intent (∆R2 = .003, p = .17). This study is unique in that studies in other contexts found employee engagement to mediate the relationship between the antecedents and turnover intent. It is recommended that even if engagement was not found to be a significant predictor of turnover intent, collaboration, reward & recognition, perceived organizational support, compensation fairness, and development are significant predictors and should be deliberately promoted.
Description
This paper was presented in the Annual SME Conference hosted by Uganda Christian University, Faculty of Business and Administration; October 2016.The study was to find out the relationship between employee engagement, its antecedents and turnover intent in selected firms in Uganda.
Keywords
Human resource practices, Employee engagement and development, Perceived social support, Recognition and collaboration - Uganda
Citation
Owor, Joseph Jakisa 2016. Employee Engagement, Antecedents and Turnover Intent in Selected Firms in Uganda