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Top1. Introduction
Human capital is the most important asset that an organisation can ever have and as such it must always be engaged for it to be always motivated to perform. The process of job engagement has never been important more than ever before because of the dynamics ever-changing within the work environment which employees work (Oz Yilmaz, 2020). Employees who are engaged within their jobs by their management tend to get intrinsic & extrinsic motivation which yields enhanced performance (Kim & Koo, 2017). Employees who are engaged as they perform their duties tend to work extra hard and are passionate about producing results for the organisation (Ozyilmaz, 2020) The importance of job engagement is to keep employees motivated and retain them at work. Employees who are highly engaged in their jobs strive to ensure that they make use of their abilities and skills to provide desirable results for their organisation (Robberts & Davenport, 2002).
Job engagement is widely related to organisational commitment but there is a sharp contrast between them. The issue of job engagement in Zimbabwe has been topical and has permeated discourse amongst employees regarding the manner in which they are performing. The health sector in Zimbabwe is compounded by a lot of challenges which are threating service delivery to the citizens. The issue of job engagement has led to a standoff within the health sector. There in is a stand-off between the health sector employees and their employer in Zimbabwe (Bishi, Shamu, Dijk & Stam, 2017). This has led to the ongoing strikes which have now gone for over 60 days as reported by the local media prints within the country. According to Ro and Lee (2017) job engagement in the country has not been possible because of cited problems which amongst include poor working conditions, poor salaries and lack of protective equipment. The issue of job engagement has been a problem within the sector for over a prolonged period of time and this demotivated a lot of employees which has led to many of the professionals seeking jobs outside of the country (Owens, Baker, Sumpter & Cameron, 2016).
Employees have been over time expressing disgruntlement over the state of the conditions within the sector which were now affecting their performance in their jobs. Employees have been citing the lack of freedom within the workplace as well as lack of training & development opportunities (Bailey, Madden, Alfes & Fletcher,2017).The mortality rate, the number of clients and patients who are being turned back to go home without services continues to rise because the health workers are not capacitated to work(Kanyumbaya & Msosa,2020).Job engagement in Zimbabwe has failed to bear fruits even though there have been efforts by those in leadership as well as the government to try to solve the impasse but concrete results have failed to manifest. In a bit to engage the employees the employer has offered car schemes, increased salaried but as Mutizwa (2020) notes these have been selectively been awarded to other employees namely doctors. There has been a neglection of other staff such as nurses as well as junior doctors rendering the prospects of job engagement useless (Behera, Prutipinyo, Sirichotiratana &Viwatwongkasem, 2019)