BUSN20016 Research Proposal: Organizational Engagement at Woolworths

This research proposal explores the concept of organizational engagement and its relationship with the creation and growth of business ventures, using Woolworths Australia as a case study. The report delves into the definition of organizational engagement, emphasizing its role in fostering employee commitment, job satisfaction, and improved morale. It examines the impact of engaged employees on innovation, support for management decisions, and overall organizational performance. The proposal includes a comprehensive literature review covering topics such as organizational commitment, productivity, and personal factors influencing employee engagement. It also explores the person-environment fit concept and its subsets, like person-job fit and person-group fit, to understand how aligning individual and organizational characteristics can enhance employee engagement. The methodology outlines data collection, sampling, analysis, ethical considerations, and potential limitations. The report aims to provide recommendations for strategies to improve organizational growth and facilitate new ventures, addressing the research question of how employee engagement can drive business venture creation. The study incorporates workforce employment statistics and discusses Woolworths' initiatives to improve employee engagement through programs like Genesys, training, retention activities, and career development opportunities. The proposal also considers drivers of employee engagement, including employee resources, job perception, career development, feedback, and relationships with superiors and colleagues.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
ORGANIZATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
Background..................................................................................................................................3
Problem statement.......................................................................................................................3
Research question........................................................................................................................3
Aims and objectives.....................................................................................................................3
Literature review..............................................................................................................................3
Organizational engagement.........................................................................................................3
Organizational engagement in creation and growth of new ventures..........................................3
Methodology....................................................................................................................................3
Data collection method................................................................................................................3
Sampling method and size of sample..........................................................................................3
Data analysis................................................................................................................................3
Ethical considerations in research...............................................................................................3
Limitation of the research............................................................................................................3
Time line of the proposal.............................................................................................................3
Expected outcome........................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
Introduction
Organizational engagement refers to carting a sense of commitments among the
employees and the organization (Ng & Allen, 2018). This carets a sense of job satisfaction for
them and improves their morale. An employee who is engaged carries out his operations
positively and he will be enthusiastic about his work. Whereas an employee who is disengaged
will negatively affect the organizational performance (Waters & Sroufe, 2017). Organizational
engagement can help in creating and growth of new ventures for the organization because the
employees will accept all the decisions of the management without resisting to changes and
therefore if the organization decides to carry out diversification activities and the employees are
engaged they will support the management decision and help it in its new venture. The company
chosen for the purpose of this research is Woolworths Australia that is the largest supermarket
chain of Australia. The main aim of the study is to discuss about organizational engagement and
how that can help in growth of various ventures of the organization.
Background
Many researches have already been done in this field to understand the relationship
between organizational engagement and growth of business ventures by the companies. A
similar research has been conducted by the professor Lu and others (Lu, 2014) where his focus
was on showing the relationships between the employee engagement and persons job fit in the
organization. According to his findings, through organizational engagement the people in the
organization create a proper position job fit (Su, Murdock & Rounds, 2015). An engaged
employee can help in the business success and new ventures as they can give innovative ideas

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and that can help the organization in becoming successful. Engaged employees help in
supporting the management in their decision by agreeing to their decisions without any form of
resistance.
Problem statement
Proper research has not been conducted properly in the field of how organizational
engagement can help in creation and growth of business ventures (Qu, Jo & Choi, 2019).
Therefore research needs to be conducted in this field to help the organization under study to
improve its venture and success by providing proper job fit for the people in the organization and
by promoting innovative thinking among them (Kim et al., 2019).
Research question
The research question is- Whether employee engagement in organizations can help in
creation and growth of business ventures? And application of the same in the Woolworths
company of Australia.
Aims and objectives
The main aim of the study is to understand the meaning of organizational engagement
and its relation with creation and growth of business venture. The paper also aims at providing
recommendation of various strategies for improving the organizational growth and creation of
various ventures to be undertaken by the organization.
The objectives of the study are:
A.)How can organizational engagement help in creation and growth of business ventures?
B.)Evaluation and analysis of organizational engagement in relation to creation of new ventures.

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C.)What strategies can be adopted by the organization for the same?
Literature review
Organizational engagement
The term organizational engagement means the relationship between the employees and
the organization both quantitatively and qualitatively. An engaged employee is one who has
positive attitude towards the work and feels enthusiastic to carry out his work (Ng, 2015). These
people help in improving the organizational reputation and aim at improving the organizational
productivity. On the other hand, a disengaged employee is one who affects the organizational
output negatively and damage the organizational reputation. Engagement carets a sense of job
satisfaction in the employees and improves their morale (Shanafelt & Noseworthy, (2017). The
term organizational engagement can be understood in relation to employee satisfaction and
employee experience. Organizational engagement helps in improving the employees experience
and acts as a motivation for them and it also helps in improving employees satisfaction through
various activities (Qvist, Henriksen & Fridberg, 2018). Organizational engagement refers to the
sense of employee connection with his job role and how well they can relate themselves-
physically, mentally and emotionally to that job role and position. It shows their commitment
towards their work. By engaging the employees the organization can help in employee retention.
There are various factors that contribute the employee engagement in the organization such as-
the sense of involvement, commitment in the employees, productivity and personal factors such
as individual differences and others (Barrick et al.,2015).
Commitment

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Organizational commitment refers to the psychological attachment if the individuals with
the organization. It deals with the employees feeling towards the organization and it can be
improved. Organizational commitment helps in reducing the turnover and improves the
organizational performance.
Productivity
The organization where employee engagement is there the productivity is higher as
compared to those organizations where the employee engagement is not there or very low (Smith
& Gallicano, 2015).
Involvement
An employee feels involved in the organization when they need to take have to
participate in various organizational decision making process.
Personal factors
Personal factors such as motivation, needs, objectives and goals of the individuals and
various other factors all affect the organizational performance because they affect the level of
engagement an individual has with the organization.
In Woolworth company, they try to keep the employees engaged by carrying out various
programs from time to time. It has recently carried out the Genesys program in order to improve
the agents engagement by empowering them. This program aimed at providing better experience
to customers by improving employee engagement. The company has over 4.1million centers for
contact and Woolworths took up the program to empower its contact center agents. By doing this
the organization is aiming to improve the customers experiences (Slack, Corlett & Morris, 2015).

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The program is aimed at providing various reporting and analytical solutions, digital solutions,
Omni-channel solutions and others. For this, the company is providing better training programs
for its agents.
Figure 1: Workforce employment statistics of Woolworths
Source: (Woolworths.com.au., 2019)
In order to improve the sense of organizational engagement the company
carries our various retention activities. The company provides various programs such as
traineeship program for school going children who gave joined the workforce, apprenticeship
program and others. The company conducts various exit interview activities in order to
understand the reason and to understand the level of satisfaction among employees of the

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organization. The company has taken various initiatives related to career breaks, parental leave,
job sharing and other wellbeing programs. This helps the company in meeting the needs of the
employees and improving their sense of engagement among the employees in the organization
(Tepper et al., 2018).
There are various drivers of employee engagement in the organization.
Employee’s resources
The employees expectation of their own strengths and weaknesses carets the
sense of engagement in the organization.
Employee’s perception about importance of job
The employee’s perceptions towards the job and its importance has a great
impact on their engagement in the organization.
Job expectation of the employees
An employee may have different expectation from his job, if these
expectations are not met by the organization then he feels a sense of dissatisfaction and
resentment in the people of the organization and this will have a negative impact on the
employee engagement.
Career development opportunities
If the superiors in a company can show the employees the option and chances
of career development within the organization then the employees will not look for opportunities

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outside the organization. Through this, the employee’s engagement increases (Palinkas et
al.,2015).
Feedback and communication with superiors
If an employee has proper communication with the superiors in such a way
that the employees can share their ideas and suggestions to the organization the employee
engagement activities improves.
Relationship with superiors, peers and colleagues
The employee’s relationship with the superiors and others in the organization
determines his satisfaction in the organization (Chambers, 2017).
Perception about the organizational values and culture
The values of the organization will determine the engagement of the
employees because if their values are in alignment with the organizational values they will be
motivated to carry out the activities.
Proper internal communication between the employees of the organization
When the individuals of the organization have proper internal communication
they feel engaged because the employees feel free to share their opinion.
Organizational engagement in creation and growth of new ventures
For organizational engagement to improve the growth and creation of business ventures it
is important to understand the concept of person-environment fit. The concept of person-
environment fit means the degree to which the organizational characteristics and individual

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characteristics meet in order to achieve employee engagement. Individual’s characteristics
include his values, beliefs, needs, and others. On the other hand, the environmental
characteristics include rewards and recognition, values of the organization and others. In order to
improve the employees engagement this concept is very important (Quinlan et al., 2019). It is the
interaction between the person and situation in which he is operating. A proper person-
environment fit leads to organization success and development. The concept of person-
environment fit covers various sub-sets within it such as the person-job fit, person-group fit,
person-person fit and many others. All these factors contribute to the satisfaction of an employee
in relation to his workplace. The first fit discusses about the person-organizational fit which
implies how well the organization and the people in it are considered suitable for each other.
This happens either when one entity meet the needs of the others or in case there are some
similarity between the characteristics of the organization and the employees. The person-job fit
happens when the job demands and the characteristics of the individuals match with each other
and complement each other. In such as situation the needs of the organization are fulfilled by the
job role that he occupies and the demands of the job role are fulfilled by the employees
occupying them. Person-group fit when there is a psychological match between the employees
and the group in which he works. This concept is related to group orientation and dynamics. The
person-person fit occurs when the preferences of individuals in accordance with the culture and
values matches with that of the other employees in the organization. All these fits helps in
creating an environment where an employee feels engaged. The theories of supplementary fit and
complementary fit needs to understand in order to understand the concept of person-
environment.

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Figure 2: Employee engagement model
Source: (Van Vianen, 2017)
According to the supplementary and complementary theory, employee engagement
depends upon certain factors. According to Kristof, 1996, the supplementary fit implies the
similarity between the characteristics of the individuals with the environment characteristics or
other people within the organization. From the above diagram, it can be seen that different types
of persons fits along with a proactive personality and empowerment employees engagement can
be achieved. The supplementary fit discusses about the similarities between the people near
environment and is therefore a similarity model. a person can be said to be a fit for the
environment when the individual finds his/her characteristics similar to that of the environment
in which he works. The complementary fit theory is different from the supplementary fit theory
due to various reasons. As this theory is not based on similarity between the characteristics of the
organization and the employee but rather depends upon complementary benefits that can be

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offered and exchanges between the entities. According tom this theory, that a person’s fit to the
environment when they can contribute to the environment and help the environment in becoming
complete. According to the complementary fit theory, a fit occurs in the organization when the
people and the environment addresses the needs of each other. For instance: the organization
provides various opportunities to the individual where they and take advantage of the same to
meet their needs. On the other hand, the individual helps solving the problems of the
environment by applying their skills. According to Plasentin and Chapman, most of the
workforce find the fit according to the supplementary theory of fit and is according to the
complementary fit theory. This is because a person feels that he is fit for the environment when
his characteristics are similar to the characteristics of the environment and the people in the
environment and in this situation the chances of employee engagement also increases. However,
in a study it was found that the supplementary fit for engagement was fund to be higher in
employees who are self-construal interdependent ability. Whereas the complementary fit occurs
in employees who are independent self-construal.
The values in Woolworths is that they are customer obsessed that means the company
puts their focus on customers, the company is inspirational as the company always believes in
leading. The Australian marker is occupied by two main supermarket chains the Woolworths and
Coles. Therefore the company has a value for being inspirational for others. The company
believes in being responsible and doing what is right. The company believes in collaboration in
order to achieve the organizational objectives. The company believes in quality products and
services. On the basis of these values the company recruits people who share the same value
such that there can be a fit between the characteristics. The company believes in creating an
environment where the employees can find a fit with the organization through regular training

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programs to see that the individual goals are aligned to the organizational goals. When the
individual goals are aligned to the organizational goals an organizational fit can occur in the
organization that can improve the employee engagement employee can carry out various
innovative ideas and operations. Some of the innovative activities carried out in the organization
are partnership with the thought works retail in order to start the research lab. This will help he
company in carrying out prototyping activities such that they can test their products with the
customers before launching the same in the broader market. Various their innovative activities
are carried out in the company which is possible because of the similarity in characteristics of the
organization and the employees characteristics. The company can however improve its employee
engagement and therefore become successful by changing the present hierarchical structure in
the organization. The hierarchical structure dies not allow the employees to communicate
effectively with the management.
Methodology
Data collection method
Data collection for this study will include both primary data and secondary data. Primary
data is collected through face to face interview with the employees of the company. In order to
understand the level of employee engagement the employees will be interviewed and their
feedbacks will be recorded. The secondary data will be collected through various books of the
company to see the employee retention activities carried out by the company.

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Sampling method and size of sample
The simple random sampling technique will be used in order have a better understanding
of the topic under study. The sample size for the purpose of this study is 50 employees of the
company under study.
Data analysis
The data collected with the help of the interview is numerical in nature and to have a
better understanding of the same it will be converted in percentage to analyze the information
properly and this will help in having proper comparison activities. Then these numerical data can
be converted into graphs and diagrams for better presentation of the data in simpler forms. A
thematic analysis of the same will be done to understand the relevance of the data with the topic.
Ethical considerations in research
Proper ethical guidelines will be followed during the research. For collection of primary
data, interviews will be conducted for this it is necessary to see that these interviews are given
willingly by the participants and that will information kept confidential. No information should
be given out otherwise the employees will not be able to answer freely. If the information is
given out then there may be some problems for the employees. The information taken from any
form of official website and other secondary sources, plagiarism has to be avoided for the same.
For that proper referencing is needed to be done. The company should avoid various forms of
ethical issues. There should not be any violation of the ethical guidelines.
Limitation of the research
A research has to overcome many limitations. Some of the limitation faced during the
research was the time limit that was given for the research was not sufficient because the topic is

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a vast topic and it needs time to carry on research on the same. Availability of resources is
another limitation of the research. There was deficiency of monetary finds and many resources
were not accessible during the research. In addition to these problems there may be issues related
to not getting proper reply from the employees because of their fear of being terminated by the
company. If proper response is not got from the employees than the research findings will be
wrong. There can be various other limitations relating to the same.
Time line of the proposal
Activities conducted by
the company
1st to
2nd
Week
3rd to
11th
week
12th to
13th
Week
14t
h to
18th
Week
19th
to 21st
Week
22
nd to
23rd
Week
24th
Week
Topic selected by the
company

Data collected from
secondary sources
 
Creation of layout 
Literature review of
study
  
Interpretation and
analysis of data
  
Findings  

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Conclusion 
Draft formation  
Submission 
Figure 1: Gantt chart
Source: (Created by author)
Expected outcome
The above proposal aims to find solutions to the research problem of improving the
creation and growth of business ventures by creating employees engagement in the organization.
The company selected for the purpose of the study is Woolworths Australia. The paper
highlights the importance of employee’s engagement for success of the organization. The paper
discusses about organizational engagement and theories related to that. The application of the
theory is done in the company under study. The various employment engagement activities
carried out by the company is shown in the study.

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References
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organizational engagement: Linking motivational antecedents, strategic implementation,
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Chambers, J. M. (2017). Graphical Methods for Data Analysis: 0. Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Kim, K., Ormiston, M. E., Easterbrook, M. J., & Vignoles, V. L. (2019). Ethnic dissimilarity
predicts belonging motive frustration and reduced organizational attachment. Group
Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22(1), 116-138.
Ng, T. W. (2015). The incremental validity of organizational commitment, organizational trust,
and organizational identification. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 88, 154-163.
Ng, T. W., & Allen, T. D. (2018). Organizational attachment and health. Journal of Vocational
Behavior, 107, 1-14.
Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C. A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N., & Hoagwood, K. (2015).
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Qu, Y., Jo, W., & Choi, H. C. (2019). Gender Discrimination, Injustice, and Deviant Behavior
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Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 1-27.

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Quinlan, C., Babin, B., Carr, J., & Griffin, M. (2019). Business research methods. South Western
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Personnel Selection. The blackwell handbook of personnel selection, 419-439.

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Woolworths.com.au (2019). {{metaController.metaData.title}}. [online] Woolworths.com.au.
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