Designing interventions to enhance employee engagement among administrative employees at Heilongjiang International University

Abstract

With the rapid development of economy and increasingly fierce market competition, higher education institutions are also facing the increasingly complex environment. Employee engagement, as one of the important concepts of human resources, has emerged as a critical success factor in today's competitive marketplace. The purpose of this research is to determine the influential factors affecting employee engagement in order to design interventions for enhancing employee engagement. The study was conducted at a higher education institution—Heilongjiang International University (HIU), a private university established in 1993. The administrative employees were chosen as the research targets to answer the questionnaire and participate in the interview. Mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative were used in this research. The multiple linear regression was applied as the analytical tool for investigating the influence of independent variables on dependent variables. Content analysis was used as the tool to analyze the qualitative data to validate the statistical analysis. From the results four out of five hypotheses are supported by the data analysis, which indicate that factors including career growth, coworker support, supervisor support and performance feedback have significant influence on employee engagement. Interventions are designed accordingly to improve employee engagement based on the results. The findings can provide both theoretical and practical value in the field of higher education organization management.