International Journal of Advanced Engineering, Management and Science (IJAEMS) [Vol-3, Issue-12, Dec- 2017] https://dx.doi.org/10.24001/ijaems.3.12.3 ISSN: 2454-1311 www.ijaems.com Page | 1102 A Study of the Relationship between Work Engagement and Job Satisfaction in Private Companies in Kurdistan Kofand Anwar (PhD) 1 , Goran Hussein Qadir 2 1 Chairman of Business, Lebanese French University, Erbil-Kurdistan 2 Accounting and finance, Lebanese French University, Erbil-Kurdistan Abstract— The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between work engagement and job satisfaction. The research aimed to examine each of ( equal opportunities, personal influence, nature of career, development opportunity, employee recognition, work challenge, supervisor behaviour, ethics and integrity, and job empowerment) and its relationship with job satisfaction in private companies in Erbil. The researcher used quantitative research method in order to measure the relationship between work engagement and job satisfaction, however only 108 respondents were participated in the current study. The researcher used multiple regression analysis to measure the relationship among variables. The researcher found that workplace challenge had the highest value among other work engagement elements = .671 and P-value = .000 which indicates that many private companies’ employees are engaged to their job because of time management, Overwhelming workloads and communication. This research highlighted the significance of workplace challenge that inspires the individuals to be more engaged to their organization. Employee engagement is a positive attitude towards the workplace and is the degree that an individual is bind to the organization. Only small number of employees had participated in this research from private companies in Kurdistan, which limits the outcome of the study. Keywords— Engagement, Job satisfaction, Kurdistan. I. INTRODUCTION Improved employee engagement can be both physical and mental, reflecting the behavioural and attitudinal fundamentals of the concept. In today’s competitive environment there is a considerable body of indication representing the advantages to businesses of having strongly engaged employees. Several academician and scholars proved that engaged employees less likely will leave the organization for instance (Andrew, et al., 2017), meanwhile; according (Li, et al., 2017), engaged employees will attend regularly. Nowadays, none of the businesses can survive without work engagement. Therefore, it is significant to recognize the conception of engagement and its possible consequence. According to (Moura, et al., (2014), engagement is a belief that demonstrates individual’s strength of attachment to an organization. The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between work engagements with job satisfaction in private universities in Kurdistan. II. LITERATURE REVIEW According to Yuang, et al., (2016), employee engagement refers to individuals’ participation or attachment to the organizations. According to (Ilkhanizadeh, and Karatepe, 2017), employee engagement is an effective reaction to the entire organization and the degree of employees’ loyalty to their organization. According to Mróz, and Kaleta, (2016), employee engagement is basically employees’ attitude to organization. According to (Orgamidez-Romsa, and Almeidab,2017), employee engagement is a psychological degree which describes the individuals’ relationships with the organization and has associations to continue as a member in the organization. According to (Wingerden, et al., 2017), employee engagement is the degree to which the individuals have strong attachment to their organization. As per (Orgambídez-Ramos, et al.,2014) stated employee engagement is significant for every organization, because high levels of employee engagement results in higher level of job satisfaction. According to (Lu, et al., 2016) engaged employees mostly have no intention to quit their job. (Rayton, & Yalabik, 2014), proved a negative relationship between employee commitment and employee turnover intentions, furthermore they proved a positive and significant relationship between work engagement and job satisfaction. On the other hand many academic scholars proved a positive relationship between employee