Diversity faultlines: exploring the relationship to individual-level employee engagement and employee perceptions of organizational HRM practices

This study examined the influence of different types of diversity faultlines (socio-demographic: gender, generation, race; knowledge-based: organizational tenure and organizational role level; Geo-proximal: geographic location) on employee engagement measured at the individual-level, along with the potential contextual moderator of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices. All three faultline types showed a significant relationship to employee engagement, with socio-demographic faultlines found to be positive and the strongest in magnitude followed by knowledge-based (positive) then geo-proximal (negative). This suggests that diversity faultlines are important beyond just their relationship to team-level outcomes. Employee perceptions of the organizations HRM did not serve as a significant contextual moderator. Multi-level modeling was used in this study.