Determinants of Employee Engagement during COVID 19 Pandemic (Case of Sri Lanka Technological Campus)

One of the main changes to the education sector organizational context that took place with the advent of the COVID 19 pandemic is the change in work practices. Sri Lankan educational institutes shifted the normal work practices into work from home (WFH) practice. The human resource practitioners identified a challenge when measuring employee engagement in work from home setting. Even though employee engagement has been widely researched, only a few pieces of research can be found on employee engagement in work from home settings during the COVID 19 pandemic. The survey was done with the selected 150 employees, using Simple random sampling. The questionnaire survey was done through email. The collected data was analysed using SPSS and followed the descriptive and regression analysis. The study reveals that the most significant factor which positively impacts employee engagement in the work from home concept is Technological Readiness. The second most significant factor is Empowerment and it proves that the empowered employees are more engaged. In addition, employee engagement can be increased by enhancing Learning Support, Reward, Recognition, Organizational Procedure, Leadership, Job Security, Safety, and Trust. The Rewards and Recognition are identified as the least endowment in work from home setting. The higher the number of years of service period is revealed the higher employee engagement in the work from home concept. Therefore, the length of the service period is recognized as a moderating variable in the Aon Hewitt Employee Engagement model. Thus the organizational policies and investments to increase employee engagement should be executed based on eight determinants namely; Technological Readiness, Empowerment, Learning Support, Reward – Recognition, Organizational Procedure, Leadership, Job Security – Safety and Trust.