XYZ Inc. has just collected survey data from their current employees.

You are asked to analyze and interpret the data so that you can help the
CEO make evidence-based decisions to improve employee engagement. The CEO of the company has asked the VP HR to analyze the data and
would like to understand the drivers of employee engagement as well as factors affecting employees’ intention to quit.
The VP of HR has asked you (the HR Analytics Manager) to analyze and report about a few questions.

Question 1
Instructions: Below is a correlation table summarizing the results of the study that looked at seven variables:
All the variables in this study were measured on a scale of 1 to 5 ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree” with higher scores
reflecting higher degrees of agreement and/or higher levels of the variable.
Information about the variables (see also p. 158-159 of the Edwards and Edwards textbook):
Manager Motivating Behaviors = Employees’ perceptions of the degree to which their managers motivate and encourage them.
Autonomy = The extent to which employees have the freedom and flexibility to choose how they complete their work.
Justice = The degree to which employees perceive fairness in the process of how their organizations resolve disputes and allocate resources.
Job Satisfaction = How satisfied employees are with their current job.
Intention to Quit = The extent to which employees intend to leave the job/organization.
Engagement = The extent to which employees are fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work.
Perceived Organizational Support = The degree to which employees believe that their organization cares about them and provides adequate
support.

 Variable Name M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. Manager Motivating Behaviors 3.75 0.99 1            
2. Autonomy 3.88 0.85 .307** 1          
3. Justice 2.76 0.77 .338** .264** 1        
4. Job Satisfaction 3.82 0.84 .382** .405** .325** 1      
5. Intentions to Quit 2.33 1.02 -.210** -.209** -.248** -.369** 1    
6. Engagement 3.51 0.83 .105** .210** .190** .299** -.508** 1  
7. Perceived Organizational Support 2.79 0.70 .323** .227** .411** .321** -.356** .269** 1
Correlations with a single ‘*’ are significant at p < 0.05 and those with ‘**’ are significant at p < 0.01
1. Using information from the correlation matrix above, answer the following questions:
a. What are the variables that are significantly correlated with engagement? In other words, what could potentially drive employee
engagement?

Variables – Manager Motivating Behaviors, Autonomy, Justice, Job Satisfaction, Intentions to Quit & Perceived Organisational
Support are significantly correlated with Engagement. In other words, all these six variables have some degree of effect on
employee engagement.

For each variable that is significantly correlated with engagement, please explain the nature of the relationship (i.e. are they
positively or negatively correlated and what that means).

i. Manager Motivating Behaviors  Engagement is positively correlated which means that higher motivation result in better
engagement
ii. Autonomy  Positively correlated which indicate that higher degree of freedom and flexibility in the job result in better
engagement
iii. Justice  Positively correlated indicating that higher degree of fairness in resolving dispute and allocation of resources
will result in higher degree of engagement
iv. Job Satisfaction  Positively correlated and shows that higher the degree of engagement is complemented with higher
degree of job satisfaction
v. Intention to Quit  Negatively correlated that shows that lower degree of employee engagement result in high degree of
intention to quit
vi. Perceived organization support  Positively correlated which means that higher the degree of care and adequate
employee support better would be employee engagement

b. Based on the correlations above, list the three strongest drivers of engagement. Based on your experiences at work and your
readings in this course and outside, come up with the “Logic” for why these either positively or negative related to employee
engagement.
Three strongest drivers are – 1) Intention to quit, 2) Job satisfaction, and 3) Perceived organizational support
Intention to quit
When an employee intend to quit the level of engagement, despite several attempt will always be lower resulting in lower
productivity as well as suboptimal performance. On the contrary when an employee is highly satisfied at work and perceive that
the organization take due care of its resources and make fair allocation or work, the level of engagement is always higher.
(Note: Link to Zoom video session on interpreting correlations here; skip ahead to the part where we discuss interpreting correlations)

Question 2

The VP of HR now wants to know where the organization should focus its attention by identifying the most important driver of employee
engagement. As the resident HR Analytics expert, you run a regression analysis to examine this question.
Instructions: Below is a table summarizing the results of the regression analysis that looked at the potential drivers of employee engagement.

Unstandardize Standard Error t Stat P-value

d Beta
Coefficients
Intercept 2.216 0.165 13.437 0.000
Manager Motivating Behaviors -0.011 0.031 -0.352 0.725
Autonomy 0.146 0.035 4.166 0.000
Perceived Organizational Support 0.281 0.043 6.514 0.000
Dependent variable: Engagement
2. Using information from the regression table above, answer the following questions:
a. What can you infer from the results of the regression analysis? In other words, what factors significantly influence engagement?

In the given above model, engagement is the dependent variable and manager motivating behavior, autonomy and perceived
organizational support are the independent variables. Looking at the p value while autonomy and perceived organization support
are significant as p value is less than 0.01. This indicate that the latter two factors significantly influence the engagement and
manager motivating behavior does not help in driving engagement.

b. Which factor is the strongest driver of employee engagement? Explain how you made this determination as well as how this
variable relates to engagement (is it a positive or negative relationship and what does this mean?)

Of the three drivers, perceived organization support is the strongest driver of engagement. As per the given model, keeping other
variables constant, a 1 unit increase in perceived organization support have capability to make highest change in the engagement
 or increase the engagement level by 0.281 unit. Accordingly both factors are positively correlated indicated by positive sign of the
slope (beta) of perceived organization support.

c. How do these results differ from findings from the correlation table? (HINT: Looking at the same variables from both tables, what
changed?)
While the multiple regression model help us to establish the relationship between the dependent variable (engagement) and
independent variable (manager motivating behavior, perceived organization support and autonomy), the correlation matrix let us
know the linear relationship between the variables without letting us understand the dependent and independent variable.
Question 3
Finally, you are asked to investigate factors that could influence employees’ intention of quitting the company. Once again, you run a regression
analysis to identify the drivers of intentions to quit. The results of this analysis are provided below.

Unstandardize Standard Error t Stat P-value

d Beta
Coefficients
Intercept 5.465 0.178 40.043 0.000
Engagement -0.513 0.038 -13.441 0.000
Justice -0.132 0.042 -3.182 0.002
Job Satisfaction -0.254 0.040 -6.373 0.000
Dependent variable: Intention to Quit
3. Using the information from the regression analysis above, answer the following questions:
a. What can you infer from the results of the regression analysis? In other words, what factors significantly influence intentions to
quit the company?

Given above is a three factor multiple regression model with intention to quit as a dependent variable and engagement, justice and
job satisfaction are the three independent variable. The coefficient values of all three independent variable indicate negative
relationship with the dependent variable. However, of the three independent variable, only engagement and job satisfaction are
significant to influence the intention to quit as p < 0.01 and justice does not significantly influence the intention to quit.

b. Provide the ‘Logic’ underlying the relationships between each driver and employee intentions to quit.

As mentioned above, all three independent variables have negative relationship with the dependent variable. Thus keeping all
other variables constant, the intention to quit decrease by 0.513 units, 0.132 units and 0.254 units for every one increase in
engagement, justice or job satisfaction respectively.

c. Which factor is the strongest driver of intentions to quit? Explain how you made this determination as well as how this variable
relates to intentions to quit (is it a positive or negative relationship and what does this mean?)
Engagement is strongest driver which indicates that for one unit increase in degree of engagement, the intention to quit reduces by
0.513 unit (more than the other two independent variable). The relationship between engagement and intention to quit is negative
which mean a rise in degree of independent variable leads to decline in degree of dependent variable.
Question 4
4. Given the findings from these 3 analyses, what would you report back to the VP HR about where organization should be focusing their
attention regarding both employee engagement and turnover?
Engagement has positive correlation with all other factors except intention to quit which is negatively correlated. Job satisfaction and
perceived organization support are two factors that have highest degree of positive correlation with engagement indicating that better
perceived organization support and job satisfaction result in higher degree of engagement. In addition perceived organization support has
the most significant influence on the engagement and a unit increase in former result in 0.281 unit increase in engagement compared to
manager motivating behavior and autonomy.
Employee Turnover is negatively correlated with all the given other six factors. As a result a decline in value of any of the six factor will
result in higher degree of employee turnover or intention to quit. Of these six factors engagement has the highest order of negative
correlation with intention to quit and thus lower level of engagement leads to highest increase in employee turnover rate. In addition the
three factor regression model also reflect that engagement has the highest impact on degree of intention to quit. For every one unit drop in
engagement level, the unit increase in intention to quit is 0.513.
Thus if the organization focus on improving employee engagement it will have multi-fold impact. As a result it will improve all the other
six five factors positively and will also result in decline in intention to quit and thus lower level of employee turnover.