Continuous Improvement of Employee Engagement: Impact on Quality Management System

Abstract

Abstract

Purpose – During the last years, quality management system has been implemented to foster organizational, cultural and management changes. Moreover, based on the employee engagement processes and the results, an idea was developed to promote and encourage employees for proactive quality improvement decisions. However, the complicated nature of quality management system did not support expected results. Firstly, the employees do not relate their quality activities as a possibility to increase effectiveness of entire organization. Secondly, the introduction of quality management system for employees is associated with appearance of complementary control actions (Mickaitis et al., 2009). This paper aims at focusing on the employee engagement and its impact on the quality management system.

Methodology/approach – This research meets the need to improve organization employee engagement into quality management system. The goal of the research is to create an employee engagement into quality management system model in order to determine the relationship between the employee behaviour and employee engagement in the quality management system, as well as to evaluate its applicability in the case of local government institutions. In order to test empirically constructed model a survey was conducted on a sample of 336 employees of a local government institution. The constructed model and the survey variables were based on the theory of planned behaviour.

Findings – The result of the study is an employee engagement into quality management system model for the measurement an organization employee engagement impact on quality management system. From the planned behaviour theory point of view, research results show the strongest link between employee engagement and quality management system. The fact of the subjective wellbeing weakly affects employee behaviour and its impact on the quality management system. From a practical point of view, the model has been constructed from validated constructs and is valid for the measurement of employee engagement impact on quality management system.

Research limitations/implications – The results of this study cannot be generalized, since the research data was collected from local government institutions perspective. The research can be interpreted as a pilot study.

Originality/value – The model of employee engagement impact on quality management system contributes for the better understanding of planned behaviour theory impact on quality management.

Keywords – Employee engagement, quality management system, planned behaviour theory.

Paper type – Research paper

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.74.4.22119