Employee communication, job engagement, and organizational commitment: A study of members of the Millennial Generation

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between job engagement and two key components of employee-organization relationships (EOR). Findings from a survey of members of the Millennial Generation (N = 539) in the United States indicate that job engagement mediates the relationship between employee communication and organizational commitment. It is concluded that when employees are engaged in their work, their commitment to the organization is strengthened and the likelihood of them leaving the organization decreases. Furthermore, an argument is made in light of the study’s findings that engagement and commitment work in concert to strengthen EORs overall. To foster engagement, organizations should remove obstacles to internal information flow and provide ongoing feedback to employees about individual and organizational issues.

El propósito de este estudio fue explorar la relación entre la implicación con el trabajo y dos componentes claves de las Relaciones entre Empleado y Organización (EOR). Los hallazgos de una encuesta de miembros de la generación millennial (N = 539) en los Estados Unidos, indican que la implicación con el trabajo media la relación entre la comunicación del empleado y el compromiso organizacional. Se concluye que cuando los empleados están implicados con su trabajo, su compromiso con la organización se fortalece y la probabilidad de que dejen la organización disminuye. Además, se realiza un argumento a la vista de los hallazgos del estudio de que la implicación y el compromiso actúan en concierto para fortalecer la EOR global. Para fomentar la implicación, las organizaciones deben eliminar obstáculos al flujo de información interna y proporcionar retroalimentación continua a los empleados sobre cuestiones individuales y organizacionales.

本研究的目的是探索工作投入与员工-组织关系（EOR）中两个关键成分的关系。对美国千禧年一代成员(N = 539)的研究表明工作投入调节着员工沟通和组织承诺的关系。结论是，当员工忙于他们的工作时，他们对组织承诺就会加强并且他们离开组织的可能性就会降低。此外，以研究发现为依据引发的争论是工作投入、组织承诺与加强员工-组织关系（EOR）是一致的。为了培养员工的工作投入，组织应该移除内部信息流障碍，向员工提供关于个人和组织问题的持续反馈。

KEYWORDS:

• Employee communication
• employee-organization relationships
• job engagement
• model testing
• organizational commitment

Funding

We thank the State University of New York College at Brockport for supporting this research with an internal grant to the first author while he was on the faculty there.

Notes

¹ This study uses employee communication to discuss organizational communication with employees. Other scholars (cf Broom & Sha, 2013) have used internal communication to describe this activity.

² We acknowledge that information adequacy, interaction supportiveness, and information flow have some conceptual overlap with other employee communication constructs. However, as Ruck and Welch (2012) and Rhee and Moon (2009) pointed out, a limitation in the EOR literature has been a focus on the process of communication, but the content of communication has been overlooked. In their entirety, information adequacy, interaction supportiveness, and information flow address the core elements of employee communication (with their emphasis on communication processes/climate and messages) as means of establishing open and credible relationships with employees (Rhee & Moon, 2009).

³ The alpha values reported are the Cronbach’s reliability coefficients for each construct.

⁴ We used the measurement items for the variables following the previously established scales, although they had different ratings. However, we did not observe any critical effects of the different rating scales in data analysis. We reported standardized coefficients that are supposed to be a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 1 and, therefore, variables are directly comparable to one another despite the different rating scales. Additionally, if the Likert scale used to measure the variables in the model is appropriate to the normal distribution of the data, then it should not be a problem to use different scales (i.e., 5-point scale and 7-point scale). According to Kline (2005), normal distribution of the data can be confirmed with the skewness ranged from −3 to +3 and kurtosis ranged from −10 to +10. Given that, our data show that all variables in SEM analysis are normally distributed: information flow (skewness = –.45, kurtosis = –.08); information adequacy (skewness = –.66, kurtosis = .81); interaction support (skewness: –.82, kurtosis = .67); employee engagement (skewness = –.48, kurtosis = –.05); organizational commitment (skewness = –.7, kurtosis = .19).

⁵ Please see the Appendix and Table 5 for information about control variables in our CFA and SEM models.

Additional information

Funding

We thank the State University of New York College at Brockport for supporting this research with an internal grant to the first author while he was on the faculty there.