Gaining a unique competitive advantage has never been a walk in the park. Any industry is highly competitive due to many players that invade it intending to maximize on revenue generation and profit making. According to Harter (2018), employee engagement is considered a strategic planning culture that enables an organization to meet the set goals and objectives within the required time frame. Employee engagement has been equated to a lever that moves the needle. Therefore, well engaged employee will not only enable a company attain a highly coveted brand, but also fine tune its financial health leading to attaining of a unique competitive advantage.

According to Kim & Koo (2017), top notch organizational culture of employee engagement translates to better service delivery to clients leading to high satisfaction rates. Satisfied customers will act as ambassadors to the company, increase profit making and revenue generation and finally high shareholder returns.

Employee engagement means that company employees express themselves physically and psychologically during the process of executing their roles and responsibilities. This leads to high level of energy and resilience, high levels of inspiration and ability to address intra and interpersonal challenges with a lot of ease (Kahn and Fellows, 2013). Employee engagement is associated with signicant effect to human capital management. It is a construct that leads to job satisfaction, development of organizational citizenship behaviour and commitment to set values and objectives (Rao, 2017). Well engaged employees get emotionally attached to the mission and vision of the organization. They develop indomitable enthusiasm for the success of the organization and go an extra mile beyond terms and conditions of their job. It is how employees put discretionary effort in her or his daily work schedule (Kahn and Fellows, 2013). Employee engagement is multifaceted aspect that is anchored on organizational integrity, trust and well streamlined communication channels.

Statement of the Problem

Companies have been trying to figure out how employee engagement can translate to enhanced organizational profitability. There has been use of employee satisfaction surveys and tools to stay competitive and improve general financial and human resource performance. Despite of substantive evidence on the importance of employee engagement within an organization, low engagement in some corporate organizations has become an issue leading to diminished brand popularity. Most organizations have been setting aside resources to design and leverage a successful total reward system. Some of the reward incentives such as job design, career development are heavily determined by the top management without considering unique needs of the employees. Line managers have failed to put the right people in the right jobs. Some of the organization’s communication systems are defective leading to delayed communication of important milestones being undertaken. There has been lack of quality employee development promotion programs. At the end of the day, organizational productivity has been adversely affected.

Relationship between employee engagement and organizational productivity has been studied for a long period of time. There is gap in the exiting literature as to why some organizations have been adversely affected due to poor culture of managing the available workforce. On the other hand, organizations that have succeeded in managing its diversified workforce are still recording poor financial health and diminished competitive advantage. Many surveys have been taken by banks and other firms to measure employee engagement. However, employee engagement has remained unchanged for a good number of years leading to stunted growth of organizational brand. According to Gallup Worldwide, employee engagement has remained relatively low at 13% (Harter, 2018). Employee engagement programs have been looking at the effect but not the cause or its relationship to organizational productivity. Some of the engagement surveys have become relatively long thus loosing the intended purpose.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to describe how employee engagement improves profitability and attainment of a unique competitive advantage of an organization/company. Therefore, general objective of this study is to investigate how best organizational practices directly affect financial health of a company. Some of the issues to be addressed include: job characteristics and profitability of a company, relationship between rewards and recognition to attainment of a competitive advantage, perceived company employee support and the profitability and the relationship between procedural justice and profitability of the organization.

Research Questions

To what extent employee management and development programs affect company profitability and competitive advantage?

Sub questions

How do you understand organizational employee engagement at Standard Chartered Bank?
How often have you participated in talent management and training programs for the last one year?
How do you perceive current total reward system at your organization?
Do you think Standard Chartered Bank is financially viable?
How often has Standard Chartered Bank involved you in making key decisions?
Do you participate in key and informed decision making process at Standard Chartered Bank?
How is the level of organizational teamwork?
Kindly cite some of the educational, training, development and motivational programs that you have participated in the last one year.
Do you think effective employee management improves your company profit making and revenue generation?

Hypotheses

Employee engagement improves profitability and ability of an organization to attain a unique competitive advantage (H_A).
There is no correlation between employee engagement and profitability or ability of an organization to attain a competitive advantage. (H_O)
Workplace diversity has positive impact in improving relationship between employees and the organizational profitability. (H_A)

Brief Review of the Literature

Employee Engagement

According to Heymann (2015), “monitoring of productivity management, and customer and stakeholder satisfaction has traditionally been handled in various parts of an operation”. Improved human resource management system and the state of the art technology have enabled business owners to integrate employee time management leading to a successful service focused enterprise. For example, cloud based labor management technology and real time attendance solutions are some of the strategic measures that unmatched organizations have embraced to improve their financial image.

Employee engagement is associated with concrete behavior as opposed to abstract feeling. Most successful businesses have found it necessary to make employee engagement central to their organization. More than 80% of human resource management personnel are convinced that ongoing peer feedback and checks are meant for enhanced organizational profitability and other successful outcomes (Beheshti, 2019). Employees who have devolved the notion that their voice is heard are 4.6 times to get motivated and perform their assigned duties and responsibilities to the best of their ability and acquired expertise.

Profitability

Companies with highest levels of talent management and general employee engagement tend to be more productive compared to those that have not streamlined their infrastructure towards employee engagement. According to Beheshti (2019), “employee engagement and wellness are finally taking center stage in the business world”. Unhealthy and defectively management employees are drag to organizational productivity and innovation. Employee engagement in the United States has gone high up to 34% (Beheshti, 2019).

Summary

Successful employee engagement improves organizational profitability and ability t gain a unique competitive advantage. Transformational and participative organizational leadership are vital for employee engagement Kim & Koo (2017). Indeed employees who not well engaged cost the United States more than $550 billion annually. Beheshti (2019) opines that 89% of employees who are well appreciated are likely to recommend their company as a good place for work. Wellness programs depend on commitment of senior leadership within the organization. Employee engagement is vital for improved organizational profitability and attainment of unique competitive advantage (Harter, 2018).

Research Method

A mixed method of research will be used in collecting necessary data. The study will be tailored towards gaining a professional and concrete understanding of the study subject and corroboration of the above study problem as well-articulated under statement problem. Effectiveness of the mixed method of research is associated with the following advantages: ability to provide clarity on the nature of the topic under study, enable the researcher have clear picture of various methodologies used to manage the entire research process and provides clear platform on how research questions and the objective will be tested (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). Mixed method is ideal as it is able to offset the weaknesses associated with single method of research. According to Creswell & Creswell (2017), mixed method of research provides a researcher with an opportunity to select best data collection as per current study. Research key findings will be valid and extrapolated to other areas if a mixed method of research is used during any scientific and systematic process of trying to explain phenomena.

A number of principles will guide the entire process of data collection, analysis, presentation of key findings and making conclusion and recommendations. There will be well designed surveys targeting sampled subject participants with advanced knowledge in employee engagement and organizational profitability. Statistical collection of data, analysis using recommended statistical package and presentation of the key findings. Comprehensive and examination of peer reviewed and scholarly articles and journals addressing subjects on employee engagement, organizational profitability and ability of an organization to attain a unique competitive advantage.

Research process is considered to be descriptive in nature. As per the above subject, the current study will seek to establish the relationship between employee engagement and profitability and ability of the company to attain a unique competitive advantage in any industry.

Operational Definition of Variables

Employee engagement, academic qualification of the subject participants, salary scale, financial health (quick financial ratios such as debt to equity ratio, current ratio and EPS) and competitive advantage are major variables to be analyzed. There will be a scale of one to ten to show employee perceptions on key issues such as employee morale, corporate culture, organizational leadership and customer satisfaction. Employee engagement will be considered an independent variable while profitability and organizational competitive advantage are dependent variables.

Measurement

Study area

Current research will be conducted at Minnesota, the United States of America. The subject participants will be selected from four branches of Standard Chartered Bank in the Minnesota. A formal and detailed request will be send to the senior management, explaining need and major objective of the research work.

Sample Design

Success of the current study is based on the best practices and principles of determining sample design. A representative sample will be drawn from employee of the Standard Chartered Bank. This will be accomplished through use of a probability stratified sampling technique. Rationale for this technique is because a stratified sample is reliable and convenient and gives valid results as compared to other probability sampling technique (Abdelbaset & Semhar, 2019). The subject participants will be organized into small groups called strata. A random selection will be drawn from each stratum and used for real data collection process. Reason for this is to ensure that an element of sample representativeness is embraced with a view of enhancing reliability and validity of the data. The subject participants will sampled from following departments: human resource managers, marketing officers, customer care personnel, data analyst officers, accounts payable officers, security officers, administrative assistants, quality assurance officer, and insurance personnel at Standard Chartered Bank. The participants will be required to meet specific requirements, such as having enough knowledge on employee engagement and organizational profitability, having been beneficiaries or victims of total reward system, having knowledge on financial ratios of the bank for the last three years and who understands corporate culture and organizational leadership style.

Sample size

A representative sample size of sixty employees at Standard Chartered Bank will be used to collect data. The research committee at North Central University will validate the manner in which views will be collected.

Timeline

Current study will be completed within a period of nine months.

Protection of subject participants

According to Fouka & Mantzorou (2017), ethical principles of research are fundamental during the actual process of data collection. The principles of justice, confidentiality, and beneficence will be fully embraced to ensure that chances of violation of the privacy of the subject research participants are fully curbed. Research ethics are meant to ensure that fabrication and manipulation of the original views do not occur. Embracing research ethics is also meant to ensure that deceiving ethics committee of the North Central University does not occur. Randomly selected subject participants will participate in the study without any form of duress or undue influence. There will be a detailed informed consent form to provide enough information as to why the current study is essential and that views of the subject participants will be well protected. According to Harriss & Atkinson (2015), any research process is required to comply with the tenet values of the individual informed consent. Therefore, identified subject participants will be required to voluntarily participate in the study while being aware of the risks and benefits of the study underway.

Research ethics guidelines by the American Psychological Association and the established federal research standards will be part and parcel of the current study. Employees at Standard Chartered Bank are at liberty to decline or discontinue with the study if they feel that their participation in the study violates their beliefs towards corporate culture of Standard Chartered Bank. With reference to this, all subject participants will be required to sign an informed consent form prior to real process of data collection.

Confidentiality and privacy of the views as presented by the subject participants will be highly protected. All participants will be assigned a unique identification code during the process of data collection. A detailed interview questionnaire will be emailed to subject participants who may perceive face to face interview sessions being inappropriate. There will be effective coordination with various stakeholders such as the sampled population, senior and junior management at Standard Chartered Bank, ethics committee at the North Central University and research supervisor. This is to ensure that successful process of data collection; analysis and presentation conform to recommended scientific guidelines for any research process.

Data Collection Procedure

Use of well designed hybrid questionnaire (having features of open and close ended questionnaire) will be used for actual data collection during the survey process. Focus groups interviews will also be used among those who will embrace use of face to face interview. Simple structured interviews as aided by various questionnaires will be used for the purpose of enhancing confidence among the subject participants and limiting chances of biases that may come up. Some of the questionnaires will be distributed via email to subject participants who may find it impossible to participate in face to face interviews. Rationale for use of questionnaire is to enhance privacy and ensure that views presented by various participants are valid. Notably, data collection will be from primary (randomly sampled organizational employees) and secondary sources (assessment of organizational corporate culture, mission, vision, core values, total reward system and the financial statements for the last three years). Key consideration was focused on the advantages and disadvantages of primary data.

Merits and Demerits of Primary Data

Questionnaires are effective tools for collection of primary data being first hand information gathered by researchers while in the actual field. Banks and corporate organizations have been at the fore front of conducting surveys, seeking for client responses via emails and telephone calls and face to face interview among others. Primary data have proved to be effective in enhancing validity and reliability. Primary data is not prone to biases and technical issues that may be caused by the third party (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). The validity of primary data is anchored on the nature of the study design such as the a randomized stratified study sample, embracing ethical principles of research and other quality assurance standards as guided by ethical committee at the North Central University.

However, there is need to be careful during field work primary data collection. Primary data collection is limited to time, the available financial and human resources and research techniques. For example, failure to integrate ethical principles of research, use of informed consent form and other key metric may make the entire process defective. Primary data collection tends to be expensive since you are required to come up with original study design, identify the study area as of the case Standard Chartered Bank in the state of Minnesota and successful delivery of the data collection tools to sampled participants.

Justification for use of questionnaires

Questionnaires accelerate the rate at which individual responses are recorded. Dissemination of questionnaires via email and use of hand held devices to record respondent views enable you to get the right responses within the shortest time possible. Questionnaires are affordable thus easy in collection of quantitative data. Self administered questionnaires make it possible to get the right insights about the issue under study (Yalemisew et al., 2018). Targeting large audiences is easily achieved by use of questionnaires. Use of internet in delivery of questionnaires makes it possible to target subject participants at any location around the globe. It becomes to compare data collected by use of questionnaires as opposed to use of other data collection tools. There is also an element of easy analysis and visualization of the key concepts. Despite these advantages, questionnaires are prone to issues of confidentiality, inability of the subject participants to understand some terminologies thus ending up providing wrong responses and failure to capture individual emotions on sensitive issues. Therefore, it is necessary to put into consideration about these issues in order to ensure that data collected is relevant.

Summary

The current study seeks to examine relationship between employee engagement and ability of the organization to improve profitability and attain a unique competitive advantage. The current descriptive study will entail data collection from sample subject participants from Standard Chartered Bank in the State of Minessota.

Intended Data analysis

Analysis of numerical information is meant to produce results from data and communicate results or informed decision making (Piepho & Edmondson, 2018). There will descriptive and inferential data analysis. Descriptive analysis is meant to provide information on qualities of data such as academic qualification, docket, and number of years worked at Standard Chartered Bank among others. Descriptive statistics such as maximum, minimum, frequency and range will be computed by use of advanced Microsoft excel application program. Measures of central tendency such as mean, median, standard deviation and mode will be computed by use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) or advanced Microsoft application program.

Measures of central tendency are meant to give clear picture of how the subject participants will have responded to research questions (Piepho & Edmondson, 2018). Measurement of standard deviation (measurement of how far or apart the participants’ responses are) will be used. Generally, standard deviation is used to show how a given score deviates from the mean score. Notably inferential analysis (use of statistical tests to testify if the observed pattern is due to chance) will form part and parcel of statistical analysis of data. There will graphs and figures of normal data distribution. Normal distribution graphs will inform possibility of data getting clustered around one number of values. In regards to this, parametric tests will be used to compute normal distribution of data.

Non-normal data distribution will be addressed under various tests. Skewness (negative and positive skewness) will be computed. Kurtosis (distribution of data that is too peaked or too flat) will also be computed to give clear image of the collected subject views.

Statistical tests

Correlational tests (tests that identify association between variables) will be computed. Pearson correlation (it is used to test for the strength of relationship between two variables being continuous in nature) will also be computed. Chi-Square (this is computed to test for any association between categorical variables) while Spearman correlation (it is used to assess the strength between ordinal variables) will be computed. A number of comparison tests will be calculated. Paired t-test (it tests the difference between two variable appearing in the same population). Analysis of Variance (ANOVA is statistical test that examines the difference between two groups of computed means). There will be regression analysis to assess if change in one variable can predict any change in the other variable. Multi regression test will be computed by use of SPSS. It is used to test how changes in the combination of one or two predictor variables can foretell change in the outcome variable. Non-parametric test such as sign test (it is used to test if two related are different by ignoring magnitude of perceived change) will be computed.

Limitations

The current study is limited within a timeline of ten years. The limited financial resources and the sample size are some of the constraining factors. The current study is also affected by time frame of ten months, limited access to enough financial data considered classified by the top management of Standard Chartered Bank and the insufficient sample size.

References

Abdelbaset, A. & Semhar, M. (2019). Finite mixture of regression models for a stratified sample, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 89:14, 2782-2800, DOI: 10.1080/00949655.2019.1636990

Beheshti, N. (2019). 10 Timely Statistics about the Connection between Employee Engagement and Wellness. www.forbes.com

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approach. Sage publications

Fouke, G. & Mantzorou, M. (2017). What are Major Ethical Issues in Conducting Research? Is there a conflict between research ethics and the nature of nursing? Retrieved from https://www.hsj.gr

Harriss, D.J. & Atkinson, G. (2015). Ethical Standards in Sport and Exercise Science Research: 2016 update. International Journal of sports and medicine. doi: 10.1055/s- 0035-1565186.

Harter, J. (2018, August 26). Employee Engagement on the Rise in the U.S., Gallup. Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/poll/241649/employee-engagement-rise.aspx

Heyman, M. (2015). Spotlight on Service: Integrating Workforce Management With Employee Engagement to Optimize Customer Satisfaction and Profitability. Global Business and Organizational Excellence. Volume 34. Issue 5. doi: 10.1002/joe.21621

Kahn, W. A., & Fellows, S. (2013). Employee Engagement and Meaningful Work. In B. J. Dik, Z. S. Byrne, & M. F. Steger (Eds.), Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace (pp. 105-126). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.

Kim, M. S., & Koo, D. W. (2017). Linking LMX, Engagement, Innovative Behavior, and Job Performance in Hotel Employees. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(12), 3044-3062.

Piepho, H.P. & Edmondson, R.N. (2018). A tutorial on the Statistical analysis of factorial Experiments with qualitative and quantitative treatment factor levels. Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science. Volume 204. Issue 5. doi: 10.111/jac.12267

Rao, M. S. (2017). Innovative Tools And Techniques To Ensure Effective Employee Engagement. Industrial and Commercial Training, 49(3), 127-131.

Yalemisew, M.A., Amelie, D., Piringer, B., Wandl-Vogt, E., and Way, A. (2018) A semantic model for traditional data collection questionnaires enabling cultural analysis. In: 6th Workshop on Linked Data in Linguistics: Towards Linguistic Data Science, 7 – 12 May 2018, Miyazaki, Japan. ISBN 979-10-95546-19-1

Determination of How Employee Engagement Relates to Organizational Profitability and Attainment of Competitive advantage

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Introduction

Statement of the Problem

Purpose of the Study

Research Questions

Hypotheses

Brief Review of the Literature

Employee Engagement

Profitability

Summary

Research Method

Operational Definition of Variables

Measurement

Summary

References

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