Organisational engagement and its driving forces: A case study in a retail travel organisation with international outreach

The Organisation Engagement Survey (OES) was designed to measure engagement and its predictors (drivers) within a large retail travel organisation in Australia. It includes a specially-developed 5-item engagement scale (ES) and a forty-item 8-factor drivers-of engagement scale (the eight factors are: senior leadership, team leadership, continuance,work support, work demands, employee empowerment, customer focus, financial rewards). This paper reports findings in this case study of the organisation on what were the drivers or predictors of engagement within the organisation (of over 4000 people, as obtained from over 400 responses reasonably representative of the overall organisation). It also provides some insights into how the OES and its parts are related to external selected common European and US scales that are used to assess engagement (specifically, The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale- short form of 9 items; the Cook and Wall Organisational Commitment Scale of 9 items; and the Three Component Model of Commitment- Revised Scale- 18 items). Confirmatory factor analysis validated the relationship of the drivers in the organisation in predicting engagement; and there were strong relationships found between the ES and the selected external scales. The OES differs from the other available scales in its integration of several thrusts as exemplified in part separately by the common engagement scales- no other available full engagement scale at the time of writing appears to have integrated and examined under research conditions the measures involved in the OES including aspects related to emotional commitment, organisational loyalty, customer focus, workplace support, and workplace leadership. The results from this case study appear to have value also for other organisations and for further research.