Abstract
Depression is a mental disorder that is increasingly found in the work environment, and it affects both employees and the organisation. On the one hand, depression affects individual’s level of work engagement and on the other, depression causes a high turnover rate for the organisation. In dealing with depression, researchers have found that work engagement can act as an antecedent that decreases depressive symptoms. Work engagement is only effective depending on the available resources provided by the organisation. One such a resource is personality. Researchers confirm that personality has a significant correlation in the relationship between depression and work engagement. However, South African literature have failed to investigate this relationship using the South African population. The aim of this study was to investigate the moderating effect of the Big Five personality traits in the relationship between depression and work engagement. A quantitative study was used to gather information from different employees in different organisations (N= 266). The DASS-21, the UWES-9 and BTI were measuring instruments utilised to gather data. Results indicated that no significant interaction effects were present for any of the Big Five personality traits between depression and work engagement. The study confirmed significant direct effects of depression and the Big Five personality traits on engagement.
M.Com. (Industrial Psychology)