Enhancing Organizational Performance through Digital Employee Engagement during COVID-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence from Japan

Nowadays, organizations face the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including educational institutions in Japan. In maintaining and enhancing their performance, they applied various technology applications for developing their employee engagement. More than 70% of firms plan to change to remote work post-COVID-19 pandemic permanently. This study intended to examine the role of digital employee engagement in enhancing organizational performance empirically. This study also aimed to see the relationship between employee empowerment and organizational performance and the mediation effect of digital employee engagement on the relationship between employee empowerment and organizational performance. The study design was quantitative or cross-sectional. The sample size consisted of 196 respondents using probability sampling in collecting data and using SPSS to process the data. The results indicated that employee empowerment had a positive and significant effect on digital employee engagement. The result also showed that employee empowerment had a positive and significant impact on organizational performance. Digital employee engagement had a positive and significant impact on organizational performance. This study showed a partially mediated effect of digital employee engagement on the relationship between employee empowerment and organizational performance.