Skill Variety And Work Engagement Among Bankers In Nigeria.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue III, March 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186

Skill Variety And Work Engagement Among Bankers In Nigeria.

Olukemi ADE-ADENIJI
Management and Social Science, Southwestern University. Ogun State, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT
Work engagement has been a major concern to organizations for over three decades, because it is what drives business. For the employee, engagement brings meaningfulness into work, which leads to commitment to the organization and to a sustained relationship with people. Skill variety as a core dimension of Job Characteristics Model, is a necessity for bank workers who face a high work demand requiring efforts, talents and diverse skills. The banks in Nigeria play a very important role in the economy of Nigeria, but they are faced with work overload and stress that bother on work engagement. This study was a descriptive one that used the mixed method approach of both quantitative and qualitative research and was carried out on banks in the Lagos metropolis. A total of 438 copies of questionnaires were distributed, and 353 copies were retrieved, and 15 members of senior staff were randomly selected for the interview. Method of analysis was structural equation modeling (Partial Least Square) for the quantitative, while thematic analysis was used for the qualitative. The results of the hypotheses revealed that skill variety significantly influenced physical work engagement (R-square = 0.346); emotional work engagement (R-square = 0.272); and cognitive work engagement (R-square = 0.438). The study concluded that skill variety is significant to work engagement among bankers in Nigeria. The study recommended that banks should provide adequate opportunities for the use of diverse skills to achieve a higher level of work engagement in the banks.

Keywords: Banks, Employee, Job characteristics, Work engagement

Introduction.

Working is a vital part of life for an individual who spends almost half of their day in the workplace. The individual being able to devote his time and efforts to achieving organizational goals means that he is enjoying and deriving some sense of fulfillment from work. The organization, on the other hand, is able to meet their targets in terms of performance and profitability. This denotes the ideal situation at work whereby the individual fully exerts all his efforts at work, and this is what constitutes work engagement in the workplace. However, organizations have been concerned about work engagement because achieving the ideal seems to have become elusive, such that only a few can boast of having a workforce that is ready to fully devote their time to achieving organizational objectives. There have been several attempts in the workplace to motivate employees to better performance and productivity. Such attempts have been concentrated on extrinsic factors that organizations believe will appeal to employees and which are adequate to meet immediate needs. However, more research has in recent times focused on issues of work and work environment because there is a better understanding that issues that deal with how work is done will most likely have a lasting solution to work disengagement. Therefore, more studies have been focusing on the design of work.
One of the earliest attempts at work design was by Hackman and Oldham (1976), who propounded the Job Characteristic Model. This was a motivational model that was meant to introduce more meaningfulness into the workplace. The model introduced five core job dimensions, one of which is skill variety, which refers to the extent that the individual is able to carry out various work tasks using different skills and talents. As long as work has many processes, there will be a need for skill variety. It is considered a means of ensuring that employees are involved fully at work, and it also brings in the element of challenge that keeps the employee alert to his work responsibilities. The essence of having skill variety as one of the core job dimensions is to ensure that people with the right skills and knowledge will be challenged to use them adequately for the success of their workplace. This will lead to satisfaction and other work outcomes that are related to work engagement.

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