SRI LANKA NAVY THROUGH THE VOYAGE OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract

The development of human resource management has alarmed the enhancement of performance outcomes. Employee job performance is one main consequences of employee engagement. Employee engagement is all about employee’s head, heart and hand involvement of his/her job as well as his/her organization. Therefore employee engagement has become a buzz word in the management circles. Other than the employee job performance, engaged employee is loyal, creative, innovative and a good team players. They are the people who take extra effort in-order to achieve the organizational goals. In the military context these characteristics are crucial. Consequently engaged employee is vital to the military context as well. National security, diplomatic relations and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) are the traditional roles of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Sri Lanka due to its island geography, Sri Lanka Navy has an especial responsibility for maritime defence. The Identified research gap is that, there is no empirical evidence about the level of employee engagement in the Sri Lanka Navy. Through a thorough quantitative study, the identified empirical and population gap was bridged. This is a descriptive study. Unit of analysis is individual i.e. officers in Sri Lanka Navy. The sample size is 108 Navy officers. Extent of the researcher interference with the study is minimal. Study setting is non-contrived. Type of investigation is correlation. Cross-sectional is the time horizon of the study. An instrument with 12 statements was used. Reliability of the instrument is also ensured. Actively/highly engaged, engaged, moderately engaged, dis-engaged and actively disengaged are the five levels of employee engagement. The results indicate that the level of employee engagement in the Sri Lanka Navy belongs to level ‘four’ on a five-point scale, which is ‘Engaged’.