Exploring the impact of Workplace Ostracism on Work Engagement: Examining the intervening role of Psychological Empowerment

Abstract

We all want to belong, fit in, and be accepted. Workplace Ostracism (WPO) is a personal recognition and judgment of employees who are banished, ignored by coworkers, or feeling ignored within the organization. The dismissive effect of workplace ostracism on employees can be witnessed in reducing employees' work performance, creativity and stimulation of negative emotional state. In order to explore the cause and effect between workplace ostracism and work engagement, this research intends to take psychological empowerment (PE) as a mediating variable to investigate management-level employees of the top 3 banks of Pakistan, namely Habib Bank Limited (HBL), National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), and United Bank Limited (UBL), and construct a research model on the association between employees' work engagement (WE) and work ostracism under the intervening effect of psychological empowerment. The study design was quantitative and carried out with a simple random sampling technique. A total of 598 responses were obtained from the management-level staff of the banks. The demographic profiles of the respondents were carried out in SPSS version 26. The correlation analysis and Structural equation model technique were used with the help of AMOS version 23. The results suggest that Workplace Ostracism is negatively linked with Work engagement and Psychological empowerment. Further, work engagement is positively correlated with Psychological empowerment. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) results show that workplace ostracism negatively and significantly impacts work engagement. This negative impact was reduced after introducing Psychological empowerment as a mediator. The results of this study will be helpful to the HR department and policymakers of HBL, NBP, and UBL to understand workplace ostracism and its negativity and how to assist ostracized employees by empowering them psychologically.