MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATION MIX AND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT LEVELS: A PREDICTIVE MODEL

Employee engagement is widely associated with productivity and organizational effectiveness, yet managers still lack empirically grounded guidance on how to allocate communication efforts to foster employee engagement. This study examines whether a structured mix of managerial communication components, together with hybrid work arrangements, is associated with different observable levels of employee engagement. The research employed a mixed-methods design. In the first stage, qualitative interviews with managers and employees identified communication practices characterizing everyday managerial communication within organizations. These insights, together with the literature, informed a structured questionnaire distributed to employees and managers. The quantitative stage included 168 respondents and examined the relationship between communication practices and employee engagement levels.

A predictive model was tested using logistic regression analyses. The model incorporated seven communication practices: communication from senior management, communication led by the line manager regarding employees’ work and personal matters, routine managerial meetings, employee participation in organizational communication, employees’ ability to express opinions in organizational processes, managerial appreciation, line managers' communication, alongside the contextual variable of a hybrid work day.

The findings show that higher engagement levels are associated with the combined presence of these communication practices rather than with a single communication activity, indicating that multiple practices jointly increase the likelihood of observable engagement behaviors.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/rebs-2026-1-0007