Developing measures to improve employee engagement in public Technical Vocational and Educational Training (TVET) colleges in Gauteng Province, South Africa : an investigation of antecedent and outcome variables

Abstract

This study investigated the antecedent and outcome variables of employee engagement within the public Technical Vocational and Educational Training (TVET) colleges in South Africa’s Gauteng Province. Job demand in the form of work overload, job resources in the form of supervisor and co-worker support and role clarity, personal resources in the form of self-efficacy, individual differences in the form of proactive personality, and psychological conditions in the form of psychological meaningfulness and psychological availability were assessed as the possible antecedents to employee engagement (referring to job engagement and organisation engagement). Discretionary effort and turnover intention were assessed as the possible outcomes of employee engagement. Adopting a quantitative cross sectional design survey, a random sample of 190 lecturers across 43 campuses of the eight public TVET colleges in Gauteng was used for the study. Twelve variables were considered with six major hypotheses. The research hypotheses were tested through correlation analysis and structural equation modelling. Results revealed that some of the proposed antecedents significantly predicted employee engagement. For example, workload has a statistically significant positive and direct effect on psychological availability (β = 0.28, p < 0.003), and a statistically significant negative effect on job engagement (β = -0.32, p < 0.000) and organisational engagement (β = -0.37, p < 0.000). Supervisor support has a statistically significant positive relationship with psychological meaningfulness (β = 0.27, p < 0.003), job engagement (β = 0.35, p < 0.000), and organisational engagement (β = 0.23, p < 0.000). This study also supported the view that psychological conditions are positive antecedents of employee engagement, and that employee engagement can influence positive employee intention and behaviour in an organisation. Implications for scholars and practitioners, especially management of public TVET colleges and the South African government are discussed as viable options for providing conditions that aid the development of employee engagement and consequently organisational performance.