Main Article Content
Abstract
It was identified that although there exists lots of research on employee engagement in developed countries, there seems to be dearth of research job involvement in this part of the world. This study therefore sets out to unravel the perceived emotional labour and emotional intelligence as predictors of employee engagement among Obafemi Awolowo university staffs. Cross-sectional survey research design was adopted and data gathered from randomly selected one hundred and seventy six non-academic staffs in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun state. Gender distribution revealed that more of the respondents 116 (65.9%) were males, while the other 60 (34.1%) were females. Four hypotheses were tested using t-test for independent samples and multiple regression analysis at .05 level of significance. Findings revealed employees with low level of emotional labour reported higher employee engagement [t (174) = -12.03; p<.01]. Also, employees with high emotional intelligence reported significantly higher employee engagement than those with low level of emotional intelligence [t (174) = 3.16; p<.05]. In addition, collectively, emotional labour and emotional intelligence predicted 5% variance in employee engagement (R = .32; R2 = .05; F (2, 174 = 4.66; p<.05); only emotional intelligence (β = .48; t= 3.53; p<.05) independently predicted employee engagement. Finally, collectively, socio-demographic factors (age, educational experience and work experience) predicted 20% variance in employee engagement (R = .45; R2 = .20; F (2, 174) = 15.64; p<.01); age (β = .28; t= 2.08; p<.05), educational experience (β = .26; t= 3.58; p<.05) and work experience (β = -.47; t= -3.53; p<.05) independently predicted employee engagement. It was concluded that emotional intelligence and emotional labour were significant determinants of work engagement; it was therefore recommended that human resource section that deals with employee recruitment and transfer should endeavor to have periodic profiles on the level of emotional intelligence of employees. This will go a long way in assisting with posting of employees with high level of emotional intelligence to strongholds of the University, in order to report high level of productivity.