MEANINGFUL WORK AND EMPLOYEE WORK ENGAGEMENT IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN BAYELSA STATE, NIGERIA

This study examined the relationship between meaningful work and employee engagement in public secondary schools in Bayelsa State. The cross-sectional research design was employed in the study. A structured questionnaire for meaningful work and employee engagement with Cronbach’s alpha reliability scores above .80 was used to generate primary data for the study. The respondents to the research instrument were 312 public secondary school teachers out of a sample of 363 drawn from 144 public secondary schools in Bayelsa State, cutting across all 8 local government areas with the aid of the Taro Yamane technique, and the data generated were analyzed with Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) at the 0.05 level of significance. The results showed a significant relationship between meaningful work and the measures of employee engagement (.656, .604, and .438), respectively for hypotheses 1 to 3. Given these findings, it was concluded that a significant empirical relationship exists between meaningful work and employee engagement among teachers in public secondary schools in Bayelsa State. Based on this conclusion, it was recommended that heads of public secondary schools should enable their staff to develop a feeling of pride by making their jobs more meaningful. Meaningfulness was also found to be significantly linked to employee dedication. Increasing feelings of work-related meaning would therefore increase dedication. To do this, the government should offer incentives for teachers that give their jobs more meaning, which will in turn increase dedication. School administrators should also encourage their staff to feel meaningful by giving their work more value, which will increase absorption.