A study of employee engagement within a Chinese context

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between employee engagement and various job related factors within a Chinese context. Data was obtained from a foreign-invested company in Shanghai through an internet-based survey. Demerouti et al. (2001)’s Job Demand – Resource (JD-R) model was partially adopted as the framework of the impact of seven job resources on employee engagement and turnover intention. Results of the analyses revealed that financial rewards and participation in decision-making in organizational resources; supervisor support in social resources; job autonomy and performance feedback in task-level resources are significant factors in shaping employees’ job engagement. Furthermore, engagement mediates the effect between job resources and turnover intention. This is one of the first empirical studies that validate the engagement model within a Chinese context. It identifies a number of job related factors that predict employee engagement and provides recommendations to improve employees’ engagement levels.