Professional development to promote employee engagement: a multi-case study. All Dissertations. http: //tigerprints.clemson.edu/all dissertations/533

Organizations with high employee engagement have positive outcomes in their organizational results. These organizations attained greater satisfaction from their customers, employees were more productive, and increased profits. Employee disengagement is detrimental to businesses, costing companies billions of dollars every year as a result. The suffered losses are a result of high turnover, low employee and customer satisfaction, and decreased productivity. Disengaged employees affected the overall economy in the United States by approximately $300 billion. Because employee engagement has an extensive influence on an organization’s financial position, many organizations designed professional development training programs targeted at enhancing the engagement skills of their leaders. Kahn’s engagement model presented the theoretical framework for the study. Kirkpatrick’s, four levels of evaluation model reinforced the theoretical basis for the study. The conceptual framework of the study illustrated the progression of participants who had attended a professional development training program focused on engagement