The mediating role of work engagement: a case study of managers in a large multi-national telecoms company in Pakistan

Organisations in the current business environment are grappling with managerial challenges and issues as they strive to remain profitable and competitive. The challenges of heightened performance, financial turbulence, new technology, globalisation and increasingly diverse workforces affect organisations’ effectiveness and performance. Managers and leaders in organisations are concluding that innovative and unique competitive edges reside within human resources. For organisations to remain competitive, they must increase the motivation and talent of all employees to meet business objectives. Current efforts to enhance organisational competency or performance have started to focus on positive emotions and the positive organisational behaviour concepts of work engagement, trust and optimism. Work engagement has emerged as a significant organisational concept in the past decade that encourages organisations to reduce employee turnover through improved job satisfaction, organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour. The practical interest and application in work engagement has surpassed the recently available studies. Challenges such as the importance of work engagement, why and how work engagement benefits organisations, managers and individuals and how work engagement can be improved still need to be addressed. Research suggests that there is a considerable difference between the roles and responsibilities of managers and employees. Managers play a pivotal role in employee engagement by fostering an environment conducive to providing employees with a sense of recognition and growth at work.