Employee engagement outcomes at the organizational level within the Malaysia SME business

Employee engagement has been acknowledged to help produce superior performance outcomes at the organizational level, but studies related to employee engagement outcomes are insufficient and there are limited investigations of this phenomenon in the context of Malaysia SME business. This gap was the impetus for the present research in identifying the factors of employee engagement at the organizational level. This research was guided by the following research problem: “how and why the factors of employee engagement outcomes at the organizational level could be established within the Malaysia SME business?” The synthesis of literature on employee engagement outcomes at the organizational level produced three research issues. In order to investigate these issues, a qualitative study was conducted and the respondents were identified using the snowballing sampling technique. 12 convergent interviews were conducted to confirm the factors of employee engagement outcomes at the organizational level. The data were then analysed using the content analysis technique. The research findings confirmed 11 factors of employee engagement, i.e. employee retention, profitability, absenteeism, customer satisfaction, productivity, customer loyalty, organizational performance, self-efficacy of manager, advocacy of organization, business growth, and satisfaction of business partner. The satisfaction of business partner is a new emerging factor which demonstrates the present research’s contribution to the body of knowledge. The results for the second and the third research issues suggested nine core factors and two non-core factors respectively. The contribution of this theory-building research is in the development and confirmation of the revised conceptual framework about the factors of employee engagement outcome at the organizational level, including the core factors and the non-core factors. Also, the present research provides methodological, theoretical, practical, and policy implications. The revised conceptual framework built from theories and empirical research provides the foundation for future research