EFFECT OF COMMUNICATION ON EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AMONGST ACADEMIC STAFF OF UNIVERSITIES IN EKITI STATE
This study examined the effect communication has on employee engagement amongst academic staff of universities in Ekiti State, Nigeria. To achieve this aim, three specific objectives were formulated – to examine the effect of superior-subordinate communication on employee engagement; to assess the effect of quality of information on employee engagement and; to investigate the reliability of information on employee engagement. Adopting the quantitative research approach, the study made use of a cross-sectional research design and a sample of 384 academic staff of universities in Ekiti State which were selected using the simple random sampling technique. Generating a response rate of approximately 72%, data was collected using a structured and close-ended electronic questionnaire and analysed using both descriptive statistics (frequency and percentages) and inferential statistics (both simple and multiple linear regression). Findings from the study showed that superior-subordinate communication has no statistically significant effect on employee engagement (β = 0.015, p = 0.578 > 0.05) amongst academic staff of universities in Ekiti State. It was also discovered that both quality of information (β = 0.202, p = 0.000 < 0.05) and reliability of information (β = -0.137, p = 0.000 < 0.05) had statistically significant effects on employee engagement. The study then concluded that communication has a significant positive effect on employee engagement amongst academic staff of universities in Ekiti State (β = 0.097, p = 0.000 < 0.05) and recommends that management of these institutions should ensure that the information being passed across in the universities is reliable and of high quality as such induces the engagement of these academic staff.
Communication, employee engagement, superior-subordinate, quality of information, reliability of information.