The impact of perceived organizational support and resilience on pharmacists’ engagement in their stressful and competitive workplaces in Saudi Arabia

BACKGROUND: In recent years, organizations around the globe have begun measuring the engagement level of employees in order to improve productivity and profitability. Employee engagement has the potential to significantly affect employee retention and loyalty. OBJECTIVE: To explore pharmacists’ perceptions of the organizational support and impact of resilience and perceived organizational support on employee engagement in a stressful and competitive work environment. METHODS: We carried out a cross-sectional survey of 81 pharmacists, who were selected as a random sample in Saudi Arabia. Those pharmacists were assigned in highly competitive jobs within organizations such as pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical distributors. We used the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), and the Perceived Organizational Support Scale (POS) to collect the data, which then was analyzed using the descriptive and analytical tests and multiple logistic regressions in IBM® SPSS® version 24.0. RESULTS: Eighty one out of 100 surveys were collected back with responses—the response rate was 81% (n = 81). We obtained moderate levels of perceived organizational support and resilience; means were 4.6 ± 0.8 and 3.2 ± 0.45, respectively. Demographic variables, resilience, and perceived organizational support predicted were approximately 29.2%, 29.6%, and 36.2%, respectively, of the variance in employee engagement. We also found a significant correlation between the pharmacists’ perceptions of organizational support and their engagement (β = 0.31, p < 0.05), but no statistically significant relationship between resilience and employee engagement. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed how pharmacists’ perceptions of organizational support are related to their engagement in the workplace, demonstrating a significant relationship between perceived organizational support and employee engagement.