Recognition of Employee Engagement in the Ministry of Education

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes employee engagement as a HR management strategy, particularly as it is applicable in the Ministry of Education. It covers the concept of employee engagement from a broad-based perspective including factors that drive it, its benefits to an organization and the workforce, and the negative impacts of having a disengaged workforce. The line of argument is based on a review of the literature and on primary data from an empirical study conducted in the UAE. Unstructured interviews and structured questionnaires were used as the research instruments to collect data from 30 respondents. These respondents are key stakeholders in the Ministry of Education and were selected through a stratified sampling method that was complemented with simple random sampling. The main finding of the study is that employee engagement improves employees’ enthusiasm for their jobs, and this translates to improved efficiency in service delivery since an enthusiastic workforce will exert discretionary effort to ensure the success of their organization.