Keywords

Employee Engagement, Interventions, Firm Performance, Productivity.

Introduction

Employee engagement as a concept was developed by Kahn (1990) as he defined staff engagement as the “harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” (Kahn, 1990). Engaged employees are fully present, and draw on their whole selves in an integrated and focused manner to promote their role performance. They are willing to do this because three antecedent conditions are met: Employees feel psychologically safe in the presence of others to apply themselves in their role performances, they have sufficient personal resources available to devote to such performances, and their work is sufficiently meaningful that such personal investment is perceived as worthwhile (Kahn, 1990; Kahn, 1992). These conditions are called psychological safety, psychological availability, and psychological meaningfulness, respectively (Xu & Thomas, 2011).

The engagement concept put forward by Kahn (1990); Kahn, (1992) is of an integrated, profound, and purposeful use of a person’s whole self in his or her role performance. This overlaps with other concepts that depict a cognitive, affective, and behavioral connection of the individual employee with the role and organization. Accordingly, some researchers propose that other psychological concepts that connect employees with their work are also part of engagement (Xu & Thomas, 2011). Even today, work engagement is an important topic across many firms.

Work engagement is currently a popular topic within many organizations, assuming its relation with employee performance and well- being. Assessment, strengthening and maintaining work engagement is thus a top concern of many organizations, and many studies have examined the potential antecedents and consequences of engagement Halbesleben, (2010), leading researchers to consider the field sufficiently well developed to warrant the development and testing of work engagement interventions. However, the evidence on which to base interventions is limited; although a variety of intervention studies are emerging. No study has yet evaluated the effectiveness of these interventions; however, it is hoped that doing so will guide future research and practice. The objective of this work is therefore to conduct a systematic review and qualitative analysis based on the focus group for the effectiveness of controlled work engagement interventions in the telecom sector in the UAE.

Research Question

The steady emergence of a number of work engagement interventions, and the mixed results which these have demonstrated, suggests that a review assessing the effectiveness of interventions is timely. Such a review would help direct future research and contribute towards the developing evidence-base. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of controlled work engagement interventions by conducting a systematic search of the literature, the results of those, which are able to be included. The work done by (Al-dweeri et al., 2017) has been considered as a reference followed for this systematic literature review.

The purpose of the study is to review previous studies and to find out the main influencing factors affecting employee engagement. In addition, the study aims to investigate the impact of interventions in different sectors and contexts. The review study presents the following research questions:

Research question 1: What are the factors (interventions) that most influence employee engagement especially in the telecom sector in UAE?

Research question 2: Does employee engagement affect firm performance?

Due to globalization and diversified manpower requirements, the business scenario has completely changed. Each and every organization, whatever scale, is thinking of ways to change the business situation to accomplish competitive advancement in the market (Heaney, 2010).

The significance of worker commitment in the present business situation achieves note worthiness and it has been named as the "hottest themes amongst the executives" lately. "Employee engagement which was defined as a persistent, positive affective-motivational state of fulfilment in employees that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption and also statistical relationship has been found with productivity, profitability, employee retention, safety, and customer satisfaction”. The higher the engagement level in domestic and global firms, the more it promotes retention of talent, sustain customer loyalty, and pushes overall organizational performance and stakeholder value. The importance of this study is that it will enable the firms to build their employee engagement strategy based on the most effective intervention in order to enhance the engagement with less effort.

Research Objectives

The academic studies related to employee engagement interventions are limited and few. An initial scoping review, however, revealed the emergence of several interventions since 2010. Almost all of these adopted conceptualization of work engagement, although large heterogeneity between the studies was revealed in terms of research design, participant characteristics, content, duration and the organization’s location and industry. Whether studies measured overall work engagement, or one or other of the three sub-components. There are different types of interventions such as personal resource building interventions, job resource building interventions, leadership training interventions and health promoting interventions.

People are the most valuable assets in any institution: their capabilities can help them accomplish major achievements if they are provided with the right resources and support. Each individual in the work environment has a different perspective to contribute based on their particular life experiences and skills, enabling them to leave a positive impression on the work they do. The UAE is keen to ensure the happiness, prosperity and well-being of Emiratis and residents. Reinforcing this vision, the UAE appointed HE Ohood Al Roumi Minister of State for Happiness in 2016 and approved a National Programme for Happiness and Positivity, which includes a range of policies and services that promote positive lifestyles.

According to the UAE Vision 2021 National Agenda, which strives to preserve a cohesive society that is proud of its identity and sense of belonging, the UAE government aims to see the country rank among the top five on the World Happiness Index by 2021. The Index measures individuals' assessments of living standards and satisfaction through a survey based on specific indicators, such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, freedom of choice, generosity, social support and absence of corruption. And one of the biggest pillars of this vision is employee happiness in UAE.

Research Importance

Many firms are focusing on employees as a first priority in order to accelerate in today's business world. A happy employee will result in a happy customer; happy customers are loyal customers further resulting in business growth. Most HR managers are trying to enhance employee engagement index year after year. Furthermore, there are funds available in budgets and efforts are made to enhance the index and to make a positive effect in the firm. This study will empower the HR managers to focus on the most important factors that affect employee engagement. And will allow them to rebuild their strategies according to the mentioned interventions in this study in UAE telecom context.

Since the first World Happiness Report, countries worldwide have been striving for a place in the top 10 and in 2019 the UAE ranked 21st, up seven places compared to its 2016 ranking. Striving for further improvement, the UAE announced its own ambitious goal to take the title of the world’s happiest country by 2031 and is taking a scientific approach to measuring and encouraging happiness. Under the endorsement of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, ‘happiness’ falls under the Smart Dubai 2021 initiative. Science, data and technology will be used to discover, change, educate and measure people’s happiness as part of the Happiness Agenda. One of the first strategic ‘smart city’ initiatives, it is a first-of-its-kind capture engine, The Happiness Meter. Implemented to measure wellbeing it is collecting real-time votes in over 40 government departments with a 95 per cent target by 2021. Since the essence of customer happiness is staff happiness, the study is providing a unique overview about the factors that affect employee happiness in UAE. And it is providing HR managers a systematic analysis of the effective interventions which could boost the engagement index year after year.

The telecom sector in UAE is an emerging market and it’s considered one of the most growing and advanced markets globally. The regulator and the telecom operators are transforming aggressively into the digital era. The digital transformation vision needs to be empowered with solid employee engagement strategies in order to accelerate into the digital future. Accordingly, this study is providing an insight towards better employee engagement interventions.

Literature Review

A systematic literature review method is followed a four-stage review conduct First, identify relevant study as per established search criteria. Second stage is identifying the inclusion and exclusion of articles and study. Third stage is a full review of articles and study then finally perform data extraction and analysis. The Below section is describing each stage in detail.

The research terms used “work engagement” and “intervention”, “employee engagement” and “intervention”. PRISMA statement as the research paper has been used. Based on the research question “The factors affect employee engagement”, to identify relevant studies below Fig 1 multistage review of articles used. The search result ProQuest 73 articles, Scopus 21, Emerald 62, Wiley 54, Sage 32, Google scholar 432 and ESPCO 42 articles all published in scholarly journals identified and processed in Mendeley reference manager. In stage 2 all articles set titles reviewed to identify the relevant studies, where studies not related to the business context of employee engagement excluded as outcome 110 studies passed to stage 3 where abstract reviewed in terms of how much articles were relevant to the main research question. The outcome of this stage is 98 articles which have been reviewed in depth to assess the relevance and quality in order to build Nobel contributions.

To find the rights synthesize the result among all studies selected many aspects of categorizing the studies, such as study methodology (case study, qualitative approach, and quantitative approach), publication Journals, and level of analysis, key finding and future research suggestion. A coding scheme used to analyze the selected factor frequency drivers to employee engagement. Each selected article has its own factors related to employee engagement as an intervention. The below appendix 3 is illustrating the different types of interventions which have been covered in the reviewed articles. Some of those interventions are unknown in the HR field. And some are unique such as storytelling intervention (Gustomo et al., 2019) and sense of calling (Cao et al., 2019).

Seven main independent variables have been defined that have relationship with employee engagement across 34 conducted studies. The identified five types of intervention job enrichment, effective leadership interventions, CSR intervention, emotional intelligence and trust and justice. Below is the proposed model to define the relationship between employees engagement and firm performance along with the defined factors.

Job Enrichment

According to (Sushil, 2014) job enrichment is a job design strategy which increases the scope of the job by adding more task responsibility and autonomy and making the task challenging and interesting. Promoted by psychologist Frederick Herzberg, who emphasized that job enrichment expands the task set and provides more stimulating and interesting work which would help in adding variety and challenge to an employee's routine work. Hence, increasing the depth of the job and allowing employees to have more control over their work. It is a very effective way of attracting, motivating and retaining competent and talented people especially if the nature of the work is boring, monotonous and repetitive.

Job enrichment can be understood as a management concept to motivate employees by redesigning the job and making it more challenging so that redundancy or repetitive tasks can be avoided. Job enrichment helps organizations achieve their goal with a higher quality of production and also promote the interest of employees by providing them a more meaningful and challenging work experience. Thus it decreases absenteeism, motivates employees and engagement and retains the quality talents. It is believed that job itself is a motivating factor and a job enrichment mechanism will allow the organizations to make employee engagement a better technique in making employees committed, to cope with the challenges of the present business environment and make organizations sustainable (Sushil, 2014).

It has been found that job enrichment and role fit to be positive predictors of meaningfulness; rewarding co-worker and supportive supervisor relations were positive predictors of safety, while adherence to co-worker norms and self-consciousness were negative predictors. Resources were a positive predictor of psychological availability, while participation in outside activities was a negative predictor. Overall, meaningfulness was found to have the strongest relation to different employee outcomes in terms of engagement (Sushil, 2014).

Effective Leadership

Leadership and employee engagement is associated in such a way. Past literature review reveals that the employee engagement is based on attention and absorption of two psychological components. The amount of time allocated by an individual to think about his/her job and role is attention, while the individual focus toward high performance and role is absorption (Mahajan & Sharma, 2015).

Theoretical work has suggested a key role for transformational leadership in engagement (Macey & Schneider, 2008). The concept of transformational leadership has four components: Idealized influence, with followers trusting and identifying with their leader; inspirational motivation, by which leaders provide meaning and challenge in followers’ work; intellectual stimulation, whereby leaders invigorate followers’ adaptivity and creativity in a blame free context; and individualized consideration, in which leaders support followers’ specific needs for achievement and growth (Bass & Bass Bernard, 1985; Bass et al., 2003). These leadership behaviors have clear links with engagement constructs. Trust in the leader, support from the leader, and creating blame-free environments are components of psychological safety which enable employee engagement (Kahn, 1990). The experience of meaningful work is an antecedent of engagement also, through psychological meaningfulness (Kahn, 1990). Further, adaptivity and proactivity, which are encouraged via intellectual stimulation, are elements of engagement (Macey & Schneider, 2008).

CSR Intervention

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not a new one. It has been in the spotlight for the last couple of decades. The CSR “is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large” (Holme, 2000). The aim of CSR is to give back a portion of a corporation’s profit to society. Employee engagement “is employee’s positive emotional and intellectual attachment and employees’ commitment to an organization’s success, which in turn influences him/ her to apply additional discretionary effort to work”. These two constructs are interrelated. It is well said that companies need CSR to make them stand out from their competitors and shape their public images and reputations. The presence of CSR practices will allow the employees to make connection with the organization, as employees perceive their social- selves as part of their association with their jobs (Collier & Esteban, 2007). In the same way, companies want employee engagement because it has connection with the performance of business. Research has been done to correlate CSR and employee engagement to some extent. CSR has found a place among one of the top drivers of employee engagement in some studies. The relation between CSR and employee engagement can be explained by two of the main reasons. First, there is no doubt that employees are one of the most valuable components of any business operation. Engaged employees who work with passion and feel a profound connection to the corporation are willing to align themselves with organizations’ strategies, mission, and values, which allows them to see the value of their work and regard themselves contributing to organizational goals. The other reason is that CSR helps organizations “win the war for talent” (Bhattacharya et al., 2008). With the increasing need for economic development across the globe, there is demand for Financial Institutions to take a central role in the efforts to engage employees in CSR practices.

Emotional Intelligence

The construct of Emotional Intelligence (EI) emerged as part of the “affective revolution” in organizational and work psychology. EI is defined as a psychological resource composed of a set of abilities concerned with the processing of emotion-relevant information and it is one possible contributor to positive job attitudes and behaviors and, specifically, job satisfaction.

A substantial body of research has focused on emotional abilities as predictors of job performance and job satisfaction over and above classic well-known constructs such as personality traits and cognitive intelligence (Joseph, 2010). Salovey & Sluyter (1997) defined EI as a set of skills for perceiving, accessing and generating emotions in order to assist thought, understand emotions and emotional knowledge and regulate emotions in a considered way that will promote emotional and intellectual growth. Employees vary in their ability to pfrocess, understand and use emotional information in the workplace (Côté, S, 2014). Kafetsios & Zampatekis (2008) noted that there are a number of reasons why workers with high EI might experience higher job satisfaction. At the intrapersonal level, one would expect that individuals who understand their own moods and can use them effectively would have the skills and resources required to repair negative moods, regulate emotions, withstand workplace stress and increase job satisfaction. At the interpersonal level, one would expect individuals who are good at understanding and regulating the emotions of others to benefit from better interpersonal relationships and social networks and to increase the prevalence of positive mood in the workplace. Consistent with this idea, employees with high EI report more positive attitudes and behavior in the workplace than their peers with lower EI, even when the influence of cognitive intelligence and personality traits is controlled (Joseph, 2010).

Trust and Justice

Despite the fact that engagement has been linked to a wide range of positive job outcomes, fewer studies have been carried out on antecedents of engagement. Antecedent variables associated with engagement include authentic leadership (Roux, 2010), need for achievement Burke & El-Kot (2010), efficacy beliefs Llorens et al. (2007) and organizational justice (Inoue et al., 2010). However, studies have not focused on the contributing roles of trust, and psychological empowerment on employee engagement, even when trust on the organization and empowerment have been found to be vital in many positive job attitudes (Fedor & Werther, 1996; Fukuyama, 1995; Shockley-Zalabak et al., 1999). So, understanding the role of trust and empowerment is a key issue to generate positive job attitudes such as engagement.

Mishra’s (1996) multi-dimensional view of trust has been adopted in this study, defined as one party’s (employees) willingness to be vulnerable to another party (organization) based on the belief that the later party is competent, reliable, open and concerned. To this operationalization of trust, Shockley-Zalabak et al. (1999) added one dimension called identification, which also acknowledges that these dimensions of trustworthiness appear most frequently in the literature and explain a major portion of perceptions of trustworthiness (e.g. Clark & Payne, 1997; Dietz & Den Hartog, 2006; Shockley-Zalabak et al., 1999). Trust is conceptualized in this study as a “state”, describing an employee’s perception of the trustworthiness of employers, supervisors, and co-workers (Chughtai & Buckley, 2008).

A possible theoretical explanation for the proposed relationship between organizational trust and work engagement is that of the Social Exchange Theory (Blau, 1964). The social exchange theory posits that employees will reciprocate positive job attitudes and behaviors when their relationship with employers is established on social-exchange principles. Thus if employees perceive the organization as trustworthy, it is likely that they will reciprocate trust by becoming more engaged in their work.

Research Model

A research model has been defined as part of this study to highlight the impact and correlation among employee engagement and firm performance taking into consideration internal and external factors impacting employee engagement. First factor, job enrichment, second factor is effective leadership. Third factor is CSR intervention. And the fourth factor is emotional intelligence. And finally trust and justice. These selected factors have been studied and analyzed trying to explore the impact and determined the practical implication and proposed solutions Figure 1.

Research Hypothesis

Researchers have investigate the relationship between employee engagement with firstly job enrichment such as Sushil (2014), and with effective leadership such as (Xu & Thomas, 2011), and with CSR (Potdar et al., 2018), and with emotional intelligence such as (Extremera et al., 2018), and finally with trust and justice as analyzed by (Singh, 2016). Enhancing employee engagement is key nowadays for many organizations in order to enhance firm performance. The study aims to investigate the relationship between HR intervention as a factor and employee engagement. In addition, the study seeks to test the below propositions and to build a reference framework for HR practitioners to enhance employee engagement index.

Testing impact of the external and internal factors affecting employee engagement where it impacts firm performance. Based on the selected factors the study proposition as the following:

Proposition 1

Job enrichment plays a major role in employee engagement. It has been proposed that more job enrichment will lead to positive effects in the overall firm performance.

Proposition 2

Effective leadership is a key element in enhancing employee engagement. It has been proposed that effective leadership will lead to positive effects in the overall firm performance.

Proposition 3

Emotional intelligence is a focal factor to enhance employee engagement. It has been proposed that more emotional intelligence will lead to positive firm performance.

Proposition 4

CSR intervention is an important and unique factor to enhance employee engagement. The study proposes that better CSR intervention will lead to a better firm performance.

Proposition 5

Trust and justice is a major factor to enhance employee engagement. As a 5^th proposition, enabling trust and justice in any organization will enhance firm performance.

Methodology

Qualitative research methodology has been followed in this study, collecting and analyzing qualitative data and performing summative mechanisms. The researcher identifies in such method the terms and the study research model as a result of systematic literature review and the focus of the study. Collective approach is based on a number of semi-structured interview questions during an organized focus group for a number of managers working in the telecom sector in the UAE. The questions of this focus group are designed to cover the main factors that affect employee engagement and firm performance. The qualitative approach used here in this study went beyond counting the words, the meaning of the statements has been taken into the consideration during the coding process. The result is recorded, coded and finally studied following. Accordingly, starting by coding the main factors, then defining the theme as an outcome of the code and finally by combining them to come up with the main factors that affect employee engagement and firm performance. Those phases were recognized by different scholars for example (Kahn, 1990).

This qualitative study targeted mixed sampling to identify those who are involved in the engagement initiatives from different organizational levels to form a comprehensive dataset from different experiences and thoughts. Interviewees consisted of both managers who are involved in designing employee engagement interventions as well as different staff from different levels as illustrated in table x below. Ages ranged from 26 to late 40s with the majority in their 30s.

The potential participants have been emailed with a formal email explaining the main purpose of this research and the focus group. Highlighting the main questions and the main benefit of this study to the practitioners and anyone in the field of HR specially in the UAE. Most of the targeted staff is in direct relationship with this study researcher. Each of the participants have been briefed verbally and through voice messages about the studies purpose, benefits, privacy, anonymity as well as the confidentiality of this qualitative study. Furthermore, it was highlighted to them that they have the total rights to withdraw their participation at any time during this process. The focus groups were conducted remotely using Microsoft Teams video conferencing platform by the researcher. The focus groups lengths were around one hour with open ended questions to open the floor for discussion in an informal way. The focus groups started by welcoming the participants and then by asking them to talk about their experience in general as well as their knowledge about employee happiness. Furthermore, evaluating their experience about job enrichment interventions, CSR interventions, trust and justice, emotional intelligence, and leadership. The data sheet also contained note space and observations notices during the focus group session.

Analysis

The process of analyzing the focus groups’ scripts followed the approach, which had been used in taping, transcribing, coding, and analyzing focus group discussions as explained above. The processes of coding and analyzing interview discussions were executed with respect to many scholars.

In this qualitative study, a focus group approach used as an approach to understand the effect of those factors from the behaviors and tones of the selected participants, in order to determine the effect of the HR interventions to employee engagement and firm performance. A number of code has been defined to simplify the process of analyzing the interviews during and after the focus group session. The Table 1 below shows the defined coding.

The goal of this study is to explore in depth the effect of main HR interventions in employee engagement by conducting semi-structured focus groups with staff working in the telecom sector. The process of developing the question of these semi-structured focus groups went through five levels as established by scholars such as Potter Levine-Donnerstein. Starting from identifying the main factors from literature, then enhancing the chosen factors, the validate the question by sending them to other scholars. Then finally review and finalize the questions before the focus group date.

The focus groups were transcribed precisely and analyzed to identify the key categories, patterns, and themes that reflect how each focus group attendee understands employee engagement and its interventions. The identifying of the theme went through different processes starting from transcribing the data and preparing it. Second, reading the transcripts more than once and reviewing the notes as well as listening to the voice recording. Third, start to generate code, themes and different concepts by recognizing the pattern of the transcript. Fourth, starts to define the main themes and subthemes of the transcript. Finally, the main themes defined and reviewed to draw a clear picture about the effect of HR intervention on employee engagement and firm performance. Below Table 2 is illustrating the demographics of the focus group participants.

The participants in the focus group are described in Table 2 as the majorities are young and they are aged in their 30s and 40s. Most of the participants are in managerial level; however, there are two participants from the technical level with good work experience. Moreover, all of the participants are working in the telecom sector in the UAE and majority of them are Arabic speakers. Most of the participants are also men.

Table 2 Demographics Of Focus Group Participants
Item	Characteristic	Frequency
Occupation	HR Director	2
	Network Operation Engineer	3
	Network Operation Sr. Director	1
	Digital Solutions Development Director	2
	Business Development Sr. Manager	1
	Smart Solutions VP	1
Language	Arabic	8
	English	2
Gender	Female	2
	Male	8
Age	Less than 25	0
	26 to 30	2
	31 to 35	3
	36 to 40	3
	41 to 45	1
	Above 46	1

Following a consistency Table 3 has been done based on the theming of the focus groups’ discussions about the factors that affect employee engagement and firm performance. This table includes study items, code, positive and negative incidents, and the balance between the values.

Table 3 The Frequency Table For The Study Construct
No	Study item	Code	Positive incident	Negative incident	Balance
1	Job enrichment	JE	141	10	131
2	Effective leadership	EL	159	9	150
3	CSR intervention	CS	119	13	106
4	Emotional intelligence	EI	107	9	98
5	Trust and justice	TJ	122	12	110

Discussion

The contingency table shows that the HR interventions such as JE, EL, CS, EI, and TJ have a positive effect on employee engagement and firm performance. Effective leadership is defined as the most effective intervention on employee engagement since the total incidents were 169 and the balance after deducting the negative incidents from the positive one is 150. All the participants agree on the importance of effective leadership intervention on employee engagement. Job enrichment came in the second rank with 131 balance incidents due to its importance in enhancing employee engagement and firm performance. Then trust and justice in the third rank with 110 incidents. Most of those interventions are well known and established in the area of human resources, however this qualitative study defined CSR as the fourth important factor affecting employee engagement positively. And finally, emotional intelligence intervention came in the last rank with 98 incidents.

Effective Leadership (EL) and employee engagement are two sides of the same coin. The majority of the focus group participants have agreed that developing effective leadership is the pillar intervention for any organization that seeks to build a perfect engaged work environment. This will enhance firm performance and that by reducing the burnout, increase staff performance. Thus increasing their satisfaction and commitment. Once the organization put the employee first then indeed this firm and their customer will be in the heart of the employee. Taking into consideration that other strategic interventions without the intervention of building effective leadership is not going to lead to fruitful engagement results. Since the dynamo of the engagement engine is the effective manager who can always detect negative influences in the team, absorb it, and reflect back positive energy.

Job Enrichment (JE) is a strategic technique to redesign the typical job function and to enlarge it to make it more challenging to the employee, in order to motivate him or her to reach a new level of engagement. From time to time, the staff needs new types of work and new targets to achieve. If the work is so typical without challenges then the staff will gradually lose their motivation.

Trust and Justice (TJ) is a foundation for any positive work environment. Trust defined as employee willingness to accept the organization is competent, concerned and reliable toward employees, customers, and all stockholders. There is also another dimension for trust, which is identification. It’s observed how the staff perceives trustworthiness of his managers and colleagues.

CSR (CS) it’s described as the commitment of the organization to participate in the community development through certain financial contribution, efforts, or services. And in the same time to maintain the benefit of its employee and the stockholders. Moreover, to give back part of the profit to the society directly or indirectly by sponsoring social non-profit events. The recent studies show that there is strong relation between CSR intervention and employee engagement. The organizations can engage their staff in its CSR initiative to motivate them further and to increase job performance. One of the most effective and optimized intervention is the CSR interventions. Accordingly, the organizations can utilize the one planned event for two purposes, as CSR event and in the same time considered as staff engagement activity.

Finally Emotional Intelligence (EI) is described as a functional factor combined of a number of capabilities related with the managing of emotion related details and its effect on positive job behaviors, attitudes, and satisfaction. The HR can build an emotionally intelligent environment starting with the leaders through effective coaching and specialized training to enlarge their perspectives.

Conclusion

Employee satisfaction is the most effective way to gain effective work engagement and employee loyalty. Showing that an employee who feels important and appreciated and with good strong leadership will effectively be a huge asset to the organization, or to put it more simply, a happy employee is a productive one. This means that for companies to maximize the potential of their workforce they must take steps according to the research starting with effective leadership as number one. That is not to take away from the importance of Job enrichment, CSR intervention, Emotional intelligence, or Trust and justice but to effectively direct these initiatives in the best way to suit the employees as individuals and also as a team.

The fact is that it is not only a happy work environment that drives employees and that having sufficient challenges and stimulation are also necessary. This is also something that an effective leader will recognize on an individual and team level. Giving the necessary challenges to keep the work interesting and keeping the employees mind stimulated. This also promotes pride of work.

The study has shown that more focus on high performance and/or a blame rich environment is detrimental to employees’ performance and well-being, which in turn affects the overall performance of the company or organization.

The telecommunications sector in the UAE should therefore focus on ensuring leaders are fully capable of being the necessary leaders by regular training and listening to employee feedback, in partnership with HR interventions such as company events and team building exercises strengthening trust and responsibility both as individuals and as a team. This should then be reflected in customer satisfaction and in turn will be reflected in the success of the company long term.

References

Al-dweeri, R.M., Obeidat, Z.M., Al-dwiry, M.A., Alshurideh, M.T., & Alhorani, A.M. (2017). The impact of e-service quality and e-loyalty on online shopping: moderating effect of e-satisfaction and e-trust.International Journal of Marketing Studies,9(2), 92-103.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Bass, B.M., & Bass Bernard, M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Bass, B.M., Avolio, B.J., Jung, D.I., & Berson, Y. (2003). Predicting unit performance by assessing transformational and transactional leadership.Journal of Applied Psychology,88(2), 207.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Bhattacharya, C.B., Sen, S., & Korschun, D. (2008). Using corporate social responsibility to win the war for talent.MIT Sloan Management Review,49(2).

Indexed at, Google Scholar

Blau, P. (1964). Exchange and power in social life, Nueva York.

Google Scholar

?Burke, R.J., & El?Kot, G. (2010). Work engagement among managers and professionals in Egypt: Potential antecedents and consequences.African Journal of Economic and Management Studies.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

Cao, Y., Liu, J., Liu, K., Yang, M., & Liu, Y. (2019). The mediating role of organizational commitment between calling and work engagement of nurses: A cross-sectional study.International journal of nursing sciences,6(3), 309-314.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Chughtai, A.A., & Buckley, F. (2008). Work engagement and its relationship with state and trait trust: A conceptual analysis.Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management,10(1), 47-71.

Google Scholar

?Clark, M.C., & Payne, R.L. (1997). The nature and structure of workers' trust in management.Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior,18(3), 205-224.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Collier, J., & Esteban, R. (2007). Corporate social responsibility and employee commitment.Business Ethics: A European Review,16(1), 19-33.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Côté, S. (2014). Emotional intelligence in organizations.Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1(1), 459-488.

Google Scholar

? Dietz, G., & Den Hartog, D.N. (2006). Measuring trust inside organisations.Personnel Review.

Google Scholar

Extremera, N., Mérida-López, S., Sánchez-Álvarez, N., & Quintana-Orts, C. (2018). How does emotional intelligence make one feel better at work? The mediational role of work engagement.International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health,15(9), 1909.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Fedor, K.J., & Werther Jr, W.B. (1996). The fourth dimension: creating culturally responsive international alliances.Organizational Dynamics,25(2), 39-53.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York, NY: The free Press Paperbacks.

Google Scholar

Gustomo, A., Febriansyah, H., Ginting, H., & Santoso, I.M. (2019). Understanding narrative effects: The impact of direct storytelling intervention on increasing employee engagement among the employees of state-owned enterprise in West Java, Indonesia.Journal of Workplace Learning,31(2), 166-191.

Google Scholar

Halbesleben, J.R. (2010). A meta-analysis of work engagement: Relationships with burnout, demands, resources, and consequences.Work engagement: A Handbook of Essential Theory and Research,8(1), 102-117.

Indexed at, Google Scholar

?Holme, R. A. (2000). Corporate social responsibility: Making good business sense. World Business Council for Sustainable Development

?Inoue, A., Kawakami, N., Ishizaki, M., Shimazu, A., Tsuchiya, M., Tabata, M.,  & Kuroda, M. (2010). Organizational justice, psychological distress, and work engagement in Japanese workers.International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health,83, 29-38.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Joseph, D.L., & Newman, D.A. (2010). Emotional intelligence: an integrative meta-analysis and cascading model.Journal of Applied Psychology,95(1), 54.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Kafetsios, K., & Zampetakis, L.A. (2008). Emotional intelligence and job satisfaction: Testing the mediatory role of positive and negative affect at work.Personality and Individual Differences,44(3), 712-722.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Kahn, W.A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work.Academy of Management Journal,33(4), 692-724.

Google Scholar

?Kahn, W.A. (1992). To be fully there: Psychological presence at work.Human Relations,45(4), 321-349.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

?Llorens, S., Schaufeli, W., Bakker, A., & Salanova, M. (2007). Does a positive gain spiral of resources, efficacy beliefs and engagement exist?.Computers in Human Behavior,23(1), 825-841.

Google Scholar

?Macey, W.H., & Schneider, B. (2008). The meaning of employee engagement.Industrial and Organizational Psychology,1(1), 3-30.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

Mahajan, S., & Sharma, R. (2015). Impact of effective leadership on employee engagement.International Journal of Education and Management Studies,5(4), 288.

Indexed at, Google Scholar

Potdar, B., Guthrie, J., Gnoth, J., & Garry, T. (2018). Yours ethically: The role of corporate social responsibility and employee engagement in shoplifting prevention.International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management.

Google Scholar

??Roux, S. (2010).The relationship between authentic leadership, optimism, self-efficacy and work engagement: An exploratory study(Doctoral dissertation, Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch).

Indexed at, Google Scholar

Salovey, P.E., & Sluyter, D.J. (1997).Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Educational implications. Basic Books.

Google Scholar

?Shockley-Zalabak, P., Ellis, K., & Cesaria, R. (1999). Measuring organizational trust: Trust and distrust across cultures.Paper funded by IABC Research Foundation.

Google Scholar

Singh, R. (2016). The impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators on employee engagement in information organizations.Journal of Education for Library and Information Science,57(2), 197-206.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

Sushil, S. (2014). Job enrichment as determinant of employee engagement.Review of HRM,3, 140.

Google Scholar

Xu, J., & Thomas, H.C. (2011). How can leaders achieve high employee engagement?.Leadership & Organization Development Journal,32(4), 399-416.

Indexed at, Google Scholar, Cross Ref

Received: 03-Mar-2023, Manuscript No. JOCCC-23-13415; Editor assigned: 04-Mar-2023, Pre QC No. JOCCC-23-13415(PQ); Reviewed: 18-Mar-2023, QC No. JOCCC-23-13415; Revised: 25-Mar-2023, Manuscript No. JOCCC-23-13415(R); Published: 31-Mar-2023