Employee Engagement as a Measure for Facilitating Organizational Quality Assurance System in Manufacturing Firms

The study investigated employee engagement as a measure for facilitating organizational quality assurance systems in manufacturing firms in Delta State. Two research questions guided the study and two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The population of the study comprised 90 employees (senior managers and lower level staff) from ten manufacturing firms in Delta State. Instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire developed by the researchers on a 4-point likert scale questionnaire. The instrument was subjected to a pilot test on 20 employees of small and medium scale businesses randomly selected from Delta State. The application of the Crombach Alpha reliability test on the returned data yielded coefficient values of 0.85 and 0.83 for cluster B1 and B2 respectively with an overall reliability coefficient value of 0.84. Data collected from the respondents were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. Findings revealed that the benefits of employee engagement as a measure for facilitating organizational quality assurance in manufacturing firms include providing top executives of organizations with practical understanding of the factors that facilitate their employee engagement in organizational quality assurance performance. Further findings revealed that understanding the factors influencing employee engagement in organizational quality assurance system enables top executives of organizations to develop and implement more effective quality frameworks that enhance performance through participative management. The level of the respondents did not significantly influence their mean ratings. Based on the findings, top management of organizations should identify triggers of employee engagement as they have the potency to activate leaders-follower relationship in keying into the quality culture of manufacturing firms.