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Maintaining a Culture of Retention: The Influence of Staff Remuneration and Work Environment on Academic Staff Engagement

Inemesit N. Ebito (PhD); Madubuike, Emmanuel Soludo

Abstract

Academic staff are pivotal to the success of any university. Their positive engagement attitudes help universities achieve their goals and objectives. How long academic staff are willing to remain positively engaged depends on the universities' ability to retain them. This concern has remained a serious challenge among universities in Nigeria. To that end, this study was conducted to examine the influence of remuneration and work environment on academic staff engagement. Two research objectives, research questions, and research hypotheses were designed for the study. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 6,930, while the sample size was 378, as determined using Taro Yamane sample size determination technique. Primary data generated for the study were analysed using simple linear regression analysis. Results from the analyses showed that remuneration (R2=0.519, P<0.05 and work environment (R2=0.536, P<0.05) have significant positive effects on emotional academic staff engagement in selected state universities in South-East, Nigeria. It was concluded that fair and frequent remuneration packages, along with access to modern teaching aids, would allow academic staff to engage effectively with their colleagues and students. The researchers recommended that management of the state universities should encourage strong university community practices, such as team-building, social events, and collaborations among academic staff, as this will improve their emotional engagement levels beyond remuneration packages, and the state universities should ensure that the physical aspects of the work environment, such as offices are designed to encourage connection and collaboration among academic staff, especially new staff, as this will contribute to developing healthy emotional engagement attitudes among them.

Keywords

Academic Staff EngagementAcademic Staff RetentionStaff RemunerationWork Environment.

References

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