Role of Social Support in Enhancing Employee Engagement

Abstract

Purpose –Improving engagement among workers can have imperative implications for organizational effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of social support in enhancing employee engagement.
Methodology- The survey questionnaire was validated using a pilot data (á=0.891). Simple random sampling method was used to select the program analysts. 400 questionnaires were distributed in which 305 were returned. Descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling were used to predict and estimate the relationships.
Findings – It was found that the social support construct emerged as a prominent indicator for employee engagement, in which the supervisor support emerged as the strongest out of the three variables. However, all the identified factors were enablers of employee engagement (R2 =0.613).
Practical implications – The results of this study, provides insight on the  importance of social support- with special reference to supervisor support, competence development practices, job characteristics and communication in the workplace as they have shown significantly higher impact on employee engagement. Hence, a work environment that fosters interpersonal harmony between the workers, provides scope for autonomy, skill and variety in the job and enhances communication are vital for effective performances that will eventually lead to organizational effectiveness.