Employee engagement in the South African short-term insurance sector: repositioning communication climate as a job resource

Measuring employee engagement is a popular means for contemporary organisations to assess employee commitment and engagement. It is evident from literature that a strong relationship exists between improved employee engagement levels and positive business outcomes. However, globally and in South Africa, employees tend not to be engaged, with non-managerial employees showing lower engagement compared to their managerial counterparts. From this perspective, disengagement, resulting in untapped employee potential, has significant financial implications. Traditional employee engagement models list a positive communication climate as one of many job resources that contribute to improved engagement, alongside resources such as performance feedback, employee autonomy and opportunities for learning and development. Against this background, this research argues that a positive communication climate could possibly play a more expanded role in driving non-managerial employee engagement than is currently recognised. Survey data were collected from four short-term insurance organisations in the South African financial sector. Data analysis was done using factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results show a reasonable fit and support the notion that a positive communication climate may have an impact on all job resources, which could lead to higher levels of employee engagement among non-managerial staff. The results show that communication climate may possibly be the foundation of job resource effectiveness. As such, management can address communication climate when seeking to improve engagement levels of non-managerial employees.