Impact Of Leadership On Employee Engagement In Banking Sector- A Case Study On First Bank Of Nigeria

This document discusses the impact of leadership on employee engagement in the banking sector, specifically focusing on a case study of First Bank of Nigeria. It highlights the antecedents of employee engagement, the predictors of employee engagement, and the relationship between employee engagement and various organizational aspects. The study aims to evaluate the impact of leadership on employee engagement and provide insights into the relationship between leadership and employee engagement in the banking sector.

Impact Of Leadership On
Employee Engagement In
Banking Sector- A Case Study
On First Bank Of Nigeria.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Background .................................................................................................................................1
Aims- ...........................................................................................................................................2
Objectives....................................................................................................................................2
Rationale .....................................................................................................................................3
Significance .................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Background
Leadership is an art of motivating a person or a group of persons so that they act in
accordance with the common goals & objectives. Leadership is the ability of an individual to
inspire other individuals. It includes making tough decisions, creating a vision, establishing
objectives and guiding other individuals and providing knowledge to achieve those goals and
objectives. A leader possess characteristics such as self-confidence, management skills, strong
communication, innovative thinking, willingness to take risks and openness to change.
Leadership implies belief. Leaders have the potential to influence the behaviour of other
individual (.Stephens and Carmeli, 2017). Employee Engagement is considered to be a mutual
effort of employee and the organization towards maintaining a professional and healthy relation.
A fully engaged employee is said to be the one who is enthusiastic about their work and thus take
positive actions to enhance organization reputation.
Employee engagement is considered as an emotional attachment that employees have towards
their workplace, colleagues, position, job role. High Employee engagement leads to high
performance as engaged employees are tended to be more satisfied as compare to the employees
who are less engaged. Employee Engagement refers to the extent which employee commits to
accomplish the work according to the vision , mission and objectives of the company. Engaging
with employees is an strong retention strategy that must be use by all organizations.
Leadership and their different styles play a significant role that impacts the employee's
performance. Role of leader is very essential to keep the workers engaged. Leadership plays a
crucial role in the sustainable growth & development of a company (Singh, S.K. And et.al 2016).
An effective leader helps organization by communicating the strategic vision and direct
employees towards accomplishing these objectives. Leaders impact employee engagement as the
leaders care about the relationship of employee and the organization as well as the well-being of
workers. The leaders invest their time in understanding and knowing each and every individual
both personally and professionally. Successful leaders show employees that are valued at the
work place and empower the worker to succeed, this can be done by a simple gesture of
recognition and appreciating them for their contribution. There are three types of leadership
styles; autocratic, laissez-faire and democratic. Autocratic leadership style focuses on strict
control and centralized decision-making that means there is less employee engagement and less
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motivation & satisfaction in employees regarding the decisions made by leaders, democratic
leaders accept the participation of group and majority in decision-making this means that
employees are fully engaged in the activities of the business they feel motivated and seek
themselves as a part of organization and laissez-faire style of leadership gives no authority to
employees, full control is with followers (Sousa and van Dierendonck, 2017). The action of
leaders impact employees engagement in the organization. Positive actions like providing
employees the power to take their own decisions will create a sense of responsibility and
motivation in the employees. And on the other hand negative actions like keeping the employees
away from participating in the business activities and simply giving orders will lower their
morale and motivation. An efficient leader must take feedbacks from the employees and make
efforts to modify. There are two attributes of leadership; first "Concern for people" reflects the
stage to which leaders take care of their team members desire, area of personal development and
second is "Concern for Production" refers to the level of how leaders motivate employee to
enhance organization productivity and the ways in which they can achieve goals to the best
extent (Shanafelt and Noseworthy, 2017). It is also said that rather than applying same leadership
style , a successful leader must keep changing the leadership style that is suitable for the task &
that is according to the maturity of the followers.
First Bank Of Nigeria Limited is the largest financial service organization in Nigeria. It
has more than 10 million customer's accounts and over 750 branches that provides a wide range
of corporate and retail financial services. The bank also has international presence via it's
subsidiaries that are FBN Bank Limited in London and Paris etc. The bank was established in
1894. The Bank built strong relationship with its customer's and focuses on strong liquidity,
leadership, risk management and good corporate governance.
Aims-
To study the impact of leadership on employee engagement in banking sector- A case study on
first bank of Nigeria.
Objectives.
To highlight and measure the antecedents of employee engagement in the first bank of Nigeria.
To study the predictors of employee engagement.
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To study the relationship between employee engagement and (a) employee job satisfaction, (b)
motivation, (c) involvement, (d) organizational commitment and (e) organizational citizen
behaviour.
Rationale
The dissertation will throw light on the relationship between the leadership with
employee engagement to have the critical evaluation of both factors in diving the significant
leadership among the banking sector of Nigeria- a case on the First Bank (Schmitt, Den Hartog
and Belschak, 2016). Apart from this, there were many researchers and scholars discuss the
importance of leadership in employees engagement along with motivation and their
advancement. The leadership in an organization has been identified as the factor in changing the
performance of employees along with employees commitment and transformation of employees.
Banking organization has been identified as the viable and interesting place to have the interface
of leadership and engagement of employees as banks used to have the high employee turnover
rates in economic sector. The concept of employee engagement is still facing considerable issue
in implementation in organization whereas it has gained acceptance in companies in last 25 years
(Popli and Rizvi, 2017). Employee engagement has lead to have positive influence in enhancing
the cultural engagement which used to increase the interest in different establishment , that is
mostly preferred by a structure organization. The aim of the research study is to evaluate the
impact of leadership on the employee engagement in banking sector. The first bank of nation
Nigeria will be discussed as the case study for the completion of research.
Investigator also had set up the various objective to have the successful accomplishment
to achieve the main of research. Further aim of research are to study the relationship between
employee engagement and other organizational aspects (employee job satisfaction, motivation,
involvement, organizational commitment and organizational citizen behaviour). The leadership
id the process to motivate the followers to achieves their personal goals along with
organizational goals. Employee engagement is turned out to be the complex task and need
proper time for stable development. In each organization there is the need for the effective leader
who can use utilize all the viable tools for increasing the employee engagement level of their
employees (Mone and London, 2018). Due to continuous changes in international market,
company needs to address the innovative ways as to meet the demand of the competitive
environment and market realities. As the result company want there employees to be optimistic,
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concerned, inspired and more important to be dedicated towards work. Thus, employee
engagement has been turned out to be most researches' concept in management literature.
Significance
As per the study in UK, and other developed countries, it has been identified that there
are more of detached employees as compare to engaged employee prevailing in today business
(Graban, 2018) . Employee engagement has lead to have positive influence in enhancing the
cultural engagement which used to increase the interest in different establishment, that is mostly
preferred by a structure organization. Leaders turned out to be supportive along with providing
vision to employee which can be helpful in decision-making process and achievement of long
term and short terms goals. There used to be continuous investigation regarding the ways to
promote work effectiveness in employee through motivation, retention and productivity. In the
recent years there are changes in the work attitude as the result of globalization and
technological revolution. Over the last decade the research on employee engagement has being
the concept of critical evaluation in the terms of organizational achievement and
competitiveness. In various research of employee engagement different definition and
measurement methods is being discussed to increase the effectiveness and efficient of employee
in company (Breevaart, Bakker, Demeroutiand Derks, 2016).
The another significance of the study is about the investigation of various identified gaps
and issues. There are many researches taken place on the drivers and conceptualization of the
employee engagement but there is lack of research in employee engagement antecedents as will
as the implication within the Nigerian banking industry. Mainly the research on employee
engagements has taken place in basically UK,USA and other European countries so there is
need or research in Nigeria. Furthermore, there study aims of adding value to existing body of
knowledge through studying the maximum of existing literature on engagement of employees
and provide introspective standpoint on the existing dispute and findings. Recently, there is
tackling concerns to the lack of universal definition of engagement as well as making
considerable efforts to have differentiated work attitude construction.
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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Theme 1. employee engagement
As per the views of Shanafelt. and Noseworthy,(2017) employee engagement refers to
harnessing of the organization members in which the employee plays the role by expressing
themselves physically, emotionally cognitively all over the time of their performance. The
employee wants to feel psychologically safe while performing their job roles along with
sufficient availability of resources . This all is termed as psychological meaningfulness,
availability and safety which tends to provide opportunities to have interventions to increase the
level of engagement. The employee used to have the cognitive, affective, and behavioural
connection with need for the organization development. Employee engagement have mediated
the straight impact on the previous firefighters' performance. The author also argued that with
the employee engagement ,there is simultaneous investment of cognitive, emotional and physical
energies which contribute in proper performance of role. As per views of__________ employee
engagement is very important because engaged employee will understand the purpose of
company where and how they fit in the organization. Employee engagement guides to the better
decision-making of the business. When an organization have engaged employees it will improve
the performance of the business. Employee engagement is the key to understand the needs and
requirement of the organization. Engaged employees are more creative, full of efforts, passionate
about their work and are faster. Through engagement employees get motivated work with
efficiency and effectiveness. Employee engagement is the feeling of employees working in the
organization for the view of their place and work. Employees engagement occurs when an
employee is contributing towards achievement of the goal and success of the organization.
Engaged employees are those who know about what to do, or they want to that work to increase
the profitability of the company. If employees are engaged it gives positivity to understand they
fit in the future in the organization. Engagement of employees leads to making investments for
the success of their employees. For evaluating the performance, satisfaction, competition, etc.
employee engagement survey is conducted in the organization. These things are helpful in
conducting employee engagement survey to check whether it is good or bad. Success of any
organization is also depends on employee's engagement. An effective survey improves the
performance of the company by effective and efficient performance of employees who are
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engaged in business. If an employee engage fully in the working atmosphere of the company
then it will increase the profitability of the business.
According to the __________ there are two factors of employee engagement in
organization which are engagement such as engagement with organization and with the manager.
Engagement in the organization, involves the organizational authority should make sure that the
feelings of their employees are higher towards the organisation as they can be the one who can
take the company to the success and helps in achieving the goal of the company. The should
organization identify about how the employees feel for their senior manager, environment of the
organization, mutual relation with other employees etc. Second one is engagement with the
manager it is more specific because it shows the behaviour of the employees with its manager
because employe's nature towards the manager plays important part in engagement within
organization. Strong relation of employees with its manager create good working condition of
the organization and it will engage the employee to work with efficiency. Proper guidance given
by manager increase the efficiency level of the employees. Workers who desperately want to
meet the goal are engaged in the company. Training and induction are the best steps of the
company to engage the employees towards the work. If training programs can successfully
handle then it can ensure the employees to do their job effectively and efficiently. If employees
are engaged then they can use their mind and increase their skill towards their work .
Theme 2.. Antecedents of employee engagement.
According to Sousa and van Dierendonck, (2017) every organization wants to increase
employee engagement as to engaged their employees to make use in their full selves for there
work role in positive way as to have better well-being and productivity. On the other hand the
argues that employee has to work harder and for the longer period to earn more money and raise
standard of living. As per the views of Shanafelt. and Noseworthy,(2017) there were mainly
three antecedents conditions has been identified of psychological meaningfulness, availability
and safety which tends to provide opportunities to have interventions to increase the level of
engagement. The Nwagara, (2011) argues that psychological meaningfulness is a challenge and
autonomy as it is influenced by work characteristics. The author also stated that the
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organizational social stem used to provide consistent support and interaction employee
psychological safety stem which helps in increasing the greater level of employee engagement.
The author Nwagara, (2011) also stated that with the help of effective leadership, employee get
the trustworthy environment to have full level of contribution into their respective work roles.
There is theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the supportive leadership and the
employee engagement.
As per the views of Sousa and van Dierendonck, (2017) there were various literature
drawn up to social exchange theory along with prior research regarding job characteristics and
organization behaviour which positively influence the employee engagement. On the other hand
the Sousa and van Dierendonck, (2017) suggested that perceived supervisor support (POS )
recognition and reward, procedural justice can be the possible antecedents. The author also
stated that theory should proper organized job demands and job resources which includes the
terms of lob control, job autonomy and the job resources. The Nwagara, (2011) argued that there
is value of congruence ,POS, along with core self valuation which used to have direct impact
engagement. Employee engagement have mediated the straight impact on the previous
firefighters' performance. The author also argued that with the employee engagement ,there is
simultaneous investment of cognitive, emotional and physical energies which contribute in
proper performance of role.
As per views of Shanafelt. and Noseworthy,(2017) the understanding of works on
antecedents in employee engagement successfully represents the important step for
understanding drivers of engagement . The Sousa and van Dierendonck, (2017) argues that it
uses to provide incomplete explantation about the complex phenomena of socio-psychological
phenomena. The author stated that if there is more involvement of psychological presence along
with emotional commitment then a better understanding can be related regarding the emotional
and social capabilities of employee. This will also help in identifying the author key antecedent
for employee engagement.
According to Nwagara, (2011) intentional change theory helps in postulating positive
emotions as it plays an important role in persons behaviour trough emotional and cognitive
perpetual system. On other hand the -------argue that there are overabundance of positive and
negative emotions around the engaging environment of employee which helps in increasing
constructive aspects of social contagion.
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As per the views of Shanafelt. and Noseworthy, (2017) there is affective commitment
which revolve around the emotional connection and the work. There author suggested that there
is highly positive correlation with employee engagement and affective commitment which has
strong influence on productivity,satisfaction,turnover and other work related attitude and
behaviours. On the other hand the Schmitt, Den Hartog and Belschak, (2016) that development
of employee is featured regarding the training, development of skills and learning of
organization. The third antecedent i.e. psychological safety has most potential for leaders to
influence employee engagement. Leadership gives supportive, loyal & trusting environment
motivates employees to have the efficient work performance.. Employees feel comfortable
around leaders with whom they have proper underatsnding and give them flexible environment.
Many of employee are interested in learning more and more skills , knowledge to keep
themselves motivated and garb more and more development opportunities.
Theme 3. relationship between employee engagement and other factors.
There is the importance for the development of the various strategy for designing and
properly communicating the essence of success key intervention in organization. According to
Schmitt, Den Hartog and Belschak, (2016 ) the development of engagement strategy have the
definition of organization business rationale and its objective. . The author also stated that for
proper development of engagement strategy , there should be strong commitment for building
integrated, multi faced dimension of organization goals and objective. The strategy will take the
leadership, culture of company and other true but facts into consideration in putting success and
gain competitive advantage from other companies.
As per the views of Shanafelt. and Noseworthy,(2017), employees engagement should
have satisfying proper and personal motivators and health work culture. In contrast, if the
company fails to have such required criteria then the sustaining the effective employee
engagement strategy will not be possible. There should be quality of relationship among the
peers, superior and respective subordinates which indicated that hoe the employee will persuade
regarding development of relation with their superior authority and their group level. The author
also stated that in the engaged performance model , it consist of the six drivers in which
inspiration and values and among the most important one. There should be effective internal
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employee communication which clearway describes about what is currently happening into
organization.
According to Singh, S.K. And et.al (2016.) employee commitment is considered as the
important past in success of an organization. There is increase in interest and acceptance of the
employee commitment with the level of involvement of company regarding the employee
welfare. The author also stated that the primary antecedent of the employee engagement are
employee age, gender, sex, education along with tier marital status and experience. In contrast,
there were many studies which shoes poor positive relationship between the employee
commitment and tenure. The study further discussion that there is strong relationship between
the job tenure and attitudinal commitment while organizational tenure is more positively
correlated with calculative commitment. . The relationship is more explained as the more years
spent in particular position used to increase the employee psychological attachment toward
organization which turns out to be benefit in pension plans of employees along with
stakeholders of company.
According to Sousa and van Dierendonck, (2017) employee engagement has turned out to be the
area of focus in organization for the purpose of retention. It means that avoiding the expensive
employee replacement cost. This may ends with the staff voluntarily semi-retirement or quieting
their jobs. The author stated that engagement helps in measuring the emotional and intellectual
commitment of employee toward the organization and contribution to development and success.
The company should have the development of the proper guidelines as to measure the
effectiveness of employee engagement along with designing and implementing the effective
initiative. The author Stephens and Carmeli, (2017.) argues that manager and employee
relationship also have the major impacts in influencing the employee engagement. The manger
uses to have creation of connection among employee and the organization which turns out to be
deal beaker strategy which lads to relation to retentions.
Theme 4. Relationship between leader behaviour and follower engagement
According to Nwagara, (2011) leadership affects the employee engagement.
Transformational leadership has 4 elements that are idealized influence, inspirational motivation,
intellectual simulation and individualized consideration. Idealized influence means followers
trusting their leaders; inspirational motivation means leaders provides meaning to follower's
work; intellectual simulation means where leaders inspire followers creativity; and
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individualized consideration where the leaders supports followers need for growth &
achievement. As per the view point of author this leadership behaviour have direct link with
employee engagement. Support from leader, having trust in leader and creating a environment
that is blame free gives employee psychological safety that enhances engagement. Experience of
the work is antecedent of employee engagement. Through these behaviours leaders can achieve
high employee engagement.
The research on leadership shows that there is a link between transformational leadership
and motivation, job satisfaction, organizational behaviour. Through the analysis the author found
that transformational leadership is positively correlated to the follower's job motivation as well
as satisfaction. Leadership is positively connected with organizational loyalty. The study also
gives evidence for a connection between behaviour of positive leader with that of followers
behaviour and attitude that is connected to the employee engagement. The author also states that
there are three criteria of leadership such as employee development, consideration &
performance orientation. The first two are relationship oriented and the last one is task-oriented.
All these behaviours of leaders have direct connection in increasing employee engagement. As
feedbacks from leaders will motivate the employees and enhance their satisfaction towards their
jobs and this will increase the retention ratio. But on the contradictory the study also states that
positive employee behaviour dependents on positive attitude and behaviour of employee's.
Further the study states that there are two factors of positive engagement; management
and mentoring i.e. communicator, power-sharing, confident etc. Supportive supervisor relations
in positively correlated with employee engagement. This supportive environment gives
employee satisfaction to be themselves and feel free to engage at the workplace. The leaders of
the organizations wish to increase the employee engagement, as engaged workers make full use
of themselves in whatever role they play, have better understanding and are more productive and
thus retain in the jobs for longer period. Three antecedent conditions given by the author are
psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability provides the opportunities to increase
employee engagement. Meaningfulness is impacted by work characteristics like autonomy &
challenge. Availability counts on individuals having physical resources like self-confidence to
invest in their performance. Safety comes from organizational systems with continuous support
of co-workers that allows greater employee engagement. The third antecedent i.e. psychological
safety has most potential for leaders to influence employee engagement. As the leadership that
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gives a supportive, loyal & trusting environment motivates employees to invest their full
energies in their job roles. Employees feel comfortable around those leaders who support their
view point and give them flexible environment. This enhances their productivity and thus
benefits the organization. Employees feel encouraged as these leaders make them feel motivated,
guides them towards achieving the goals and objectives of the organization with their respective
personal goals.
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REFERENCES
BOOK AND JOURNAL
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Graban, M., 2018. Lean hospitals: improving quality, patient safety, and employee engagement.
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Schmitt, A., Den Hartog, D.N. and Belschak, F.D., 2016. Transformational leadership and
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