Investigating the relationship between employee engagement, counterproductive-work behaviors and turnover intentions in a selected South African correctional service facility

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to investigate employee work engagement, counterproductive work behaviours and turnover intentions of staff in the selected Department of Correctional Service facility in the Limpopo Province. This study adopted positivism as a research paradigm and used the quantitative research approach with a conclusive quantitative and descriptive cross sectional correlation design. The sample size used in this study was 249 participants from a population of 500 correctional staff comprising of custodial, security and administrative officers. 270 questionnaires were retuned by the participants, representing a response rate of 92.2%. Results show that there was a negative association between employee work engagement and counterproductive work behaviours. This implies that as employee work engagement increases, counterproductive work behaviours reduce. The study concludes that there was, to a greater extent, a negative relationship between employee work engagement and counterproductive work behaviours except for the subsample of female respondents who showed positive relationship between the construct employee work engagement and the variable of counterproductive work behaviours. There was an anomalous relationship between employee work engagement and counterproductive work behaviours for females as the associations were positive instead of being negative as per the literature which was explored.