The influence of operational changes on employee engagement and customer satisfaction: an exploratory study

Due to intense financial pressure companies are increasingly adopting operational changes to cut costs by increasing an organization's efficiency. While such changes have been proven to provide some competitive advantage for organizations that implement them effectively, they may also have a negative impact on an organization's employees. Organizations are also increasingly recognizing the value of having a highly engaged work force. William Kahn first introduced the term employee engagement in an article published in the Academy of Management Journal in 1990 (Kahn, 1990) . For decades researchers at Gallup Inchave studied employee engagement and have found that employee engagement is highly correlated to an organization's effectiveness and profitability. My research suggests that operational changes may have a negative impact on employee engagement levels where such changes have occurred. This study may also suggest that operational changes have a negative impact on customer satisfaction. Using data from Ameritech College I found that employee engagement and customer satisfaction levels changed in the same direction from 2015 to 2016 and that such changes w ere found to be statistically significant. Although further testing is required to test the validity of this research, if the findings reported here are found to be true, it may be possible that some operational changes have a negative impact on the financial performance of the employee-customer encounter as well.