Employee engagement at work can be referred to as the harnessing of organizational members’ selves to their work roles. In engagement people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally (Kahn, 1990). Through the present study an attempt has been made to identify the contribution of some antecedents towards employee engagement. Under the antecedents we have taken two relationship-oriented variables (co-worker cohesion and supervisor support), three personal growth variables (autonomy, task orientation and work pressure) and three system maintenance variables (clarity, control and physical comfort). The researchers attempted to investigate the contribution of these antecedent variables towards level of engagement by conducting the study upon 100 semi-skilled employees from food processing organizations situated around Patiala, Punjab. The level of engagement of the employees has been explicated in terms of cognitive, emotional and physical engagement. Stepwise multiple regression analysis has been carried out separately for each of these engagement variables to delineate the contribution of the eight antecedent variables towards them. The finding indicates that two personal growth variables, namely ‘work pressure’ and ‘autonomy’ have significant contribution towards cognitive as well as emotional engagement followed by the contribution of the relationship oriented variables. However, except ‘peer cohesion’, there is no significant contribution of any other variable towards physical engagement. The findings have been discussed in light of related literatures.
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