Talent management, employee engagement, transformational leadership and employee performance of academic staff in public universities in Uganda

Abstract

Employee performance remains an important concept in enhancing individual and organizational performance in contemporary organizations. However, in recent years, performance of academic staff in public universities has not improved to the expected standards as reports of poor performance in terms of ineffective teaching, low records of publications, and inability to attract and win grants continue to prevail in most public universities. Amidst the vice, there are many factors affecting employee performance, but no conclusive studies have examined the indirect effects of the factors associated with employee performance in public universities. Hence, study sought to examine the effect of talent management, employee engagement and transformational leadership on employee performance of academic staff in public universities in Uganda. The specific objectives were to examine the effect of: talent management on employee performance; employee engagement on employee performance; transformational leadership on employee performance; talent management on employee engagement; to assess the mediating effect of employee engagement on talent management and employee performance, to analyse the moderating effect of transformational leadership on talent management and employee engagement, to determine the moderating effect of transformational leadership on talent management and employee performance, to establish the moderating effect of transformational leadership on the indirect effect of talent management and employee performance through employee engagement. The study was anchored on AMO framework, human capital theory, social exchange theory, and transformational leadership theory. The study adopted positivism philosophy and explanatory design. The target population was 3,335 academic staff of public universities in Uganda with a sample of 536 academic staff selected using multistage sampling technique. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. Data was analysed using hierarchical regression model and Process Macro version 4.1 was used to test for the direct and indirect hypotheses. The study found that talent management (β = .609, p < .001), employee engagement (β = .226, p < .001), transformational leadership (β = .286, p < .001) were significant predictors of employee performance. Talent management (β = .471, p < .001) was a significant predictor of employee engagement. Employee engagement mediated the relationship between talent management and employee performance (β = .101, p < .001, CI = .059, .149). Transformational leadership moderated the relationship between talent management and employee engagement (β = -.110, p < .05, CI = -.186, -.035). Transformational leadership moderated the relationship between talent management and employee performance (β = -.090, p < .05, CI = -.152, -.027). Furthermore, transformational leadership moderated the indirect relationship between talent management and employee performance through employee engagement (β = -.015, CI = -.035, -.001). The study concluded that transformational leadership moderates the indirect relationship between talent management and employee performance through employee engagement. The study contributes to literature by highlighting the conditional indirect effect of transformational leadership on talent management and employee performance through employee engagement among academic staff in public universities in Uganda. The study recommends that leaders in public universities need to develop an integrated talent management and employee engagement strategies to identify, deploy, develop, retain, and engage academic staff to achieve extra ordinary levels of performance among academic staff in public universities in Uganda.