Question:
Give the a literature review and critical analysis on human resource management?
Answer:
Introduction
With the rapid growth in industrialization and technological innovations over the past few decades, the global structure of management and business has changed drastically. The significant approach to perform business in a global level has changed over the past few decades because of the huge competition prevailing in the global market (Ang, n.d.). Organizations all around the world take significant steps to analyze the global market in prolific ways and conceptualize on the important aspects that would enable the organization to survive in the market with applying necessary ideas and plans. One of the most important aspect organizations take to contribute in the success of the organization is managing the talent and employee engagement (Brajer-Marczak, 2014). Every organization is looking for getting an answer to how to find and convince people who can assuredly contribute the required competencies and add value in a continuous basis for the prosperity of the organization.
Employee engagement is a key factor in present world for retaining talent. It is one of the most key outcome variables for the growth rate of an organization. It is all about how a talented employee is intellectually and emotionally committed towards an organizational group. An employee who is engaged is always enthusiastic and fully participative about the provided job responsibilities (Bridger, 2014). Employee engagement is directly proportionate to the talent management; it is because when a talented person feels their importance in an organization then their benefactions will always make an important difference to the organizational objectives and goals. This actually enables them to feel acknowledged, noticed, valued, motivated, aligned and appreciated towards the goals and objectives of the organization. Employee engagement enables all significant levels of employees to be focused on the dynamic interest which will prolifically result in customer satisfaction, performance improvement, engagement in work, absenteeism and reduced turnover and all of these will create a major impact on the core of the organization (Cervai, Kekäle and Claxton, 2014).
Literature Review
Employee engagement is a fast growing concept within the global business levels due to the research and evidence that critically highlights that an engaged employer in an organization performs better and thus enables to create a strong “employer brand”. Various researchers have analyzed and highlighted that employee engagement is one of the most vital combination of responsibility to the organization and the values adds a eagerness to support and advice the fellow colleagues (Cook, 2008). The improvement in employee engagement embraces the significant concept of motivation; attachment and job satisfaction that portray the attitudes of individual employees towards their employers but it forces pass them to analyze the potential model of the psychological association between the organizations and individuals.
There are several factors that constitute the employee engagement improvement. The particular areas and the important concepts are listening, trust, avoidance of lengthy hour culture, managerial styles, leadership, company reputation, respect and flexible working (Crosby, n.d.). These factors plays a crucial role in employee engagement prior to the talent management is concerned. Employee management techniques conceptualize the managerial implications which enable the integrity in engaging needful workforce.
Critical Analysis
Various researches has depicted that devoted employees perform better. If we obtain that employee engagement, as many believe, is another word for commitment, then it is clearly in the interest of the organization to figure out the important drivers of engagement (Eldor and Harpaz, 2015). Significant analysis along with various analytical study and research indicated the experiences and opinions about major aspects of working life that are heavily related to different levels of engagement. However the most important and sensitive driver of all is the sense of feeling involved and valued. This holds several important components:
- Engagement in decision making
- To develop their jobs the opportunities the employees gets
- The intensity to which the employees feel adept to forecast their ideas, and the supervisors or managers listens to their ideas and views and appreciate their contributions
- The intensity to which the organization is anxious for the wellbeing and health of the employees
The line managers play a significant role in encouraging the employees’ value and involvement. This prolifically helps the employees to have a positive feeling about their value within the organization which psychologically boost them to be more motivated and devoted towards their specific tasks and loyal to the organization (Garber, 2007). KAHN a renounced researcher described employee engagement as a key concept that targets on how the psychological work experiences and context of the work appears the procedure of the people dispense and absenting themselves during the work performance. Macey argued that the employee engagement has been significantly used to refer the psychological condition or combination. Wellins and Concelman analyzed that employee engagement is actually a synthesis of loyalty, productivity, commitment and ownership. It is epitomized by the energy and passion the employees possess to provide to the organization (Garber, n.d.). Ability and willingness are the critical factors of the employees that give continuous voluntary effort for the success of the organization. This reflects that employee engagement is inevitably linked to the psychological contract that concerns the voluntary effort with various positive effects. Leigh and Roper analyzed that the unwritten contract or psychological contract is a biased behavior where most of the employees as well as the employers possess their own perception of what is normally expected from one another. Therefore it is quite obvious that it is not possible to crave employee engagement as a part of the employment contract. It is an affecting link to the purpose, people and to the organization (Garber, 2011).
According to Lockwood employee engagement is influenced by several factors as of organizational communication, company reputation, work place culture etc. and for the different generation of the present career opportunities, training, empowerment and work place balance have particularly become very important (Vestal, 2012). The Towers Perrin report suggests that employee engagement factors are driven by the significant combination of Lockwood and Macleod. He suggests that challenging work, decision making, reputation of a good employer, management interest etc. drives an employee to be engaged, motivated and dedicated towards the organization (Gupta, 2015). But, according to the research conducted by the CPID that mainly focused on the attitudes of the employees found that the most significant drivers of employee engagement were leadership and communication along with development and learning, pay and benefits, work life balance and line management are the important aspects that measures the attitudes of the employees which can provide a conceptualized overview about the engagement of a workforce. A substitute model of engagement arises from the literature of “burnout” that defines engagement of job as one of the most positive distinctions of burnout, clearly describing that burnout embraces the erosion of one’s job engagement (Hoxsey, 2010). Malasch explained there is all total six areas work life that leads to the job engagement they are control, rewards, workload, recognition, social support and values. There has always been an argument that job engagement is fairly associated with the feasible workload, appropriate recognition, rewards, choice and control, feelings, justice and fairness, meaningful and valued work. Just alike burnout employee engagement is also expected to intrude the major links in between the above mentioned six factors and different work conclusion (Ibrahim and Al Falasi, 2014). Most of the above mentioned holds the common theme and similarly another research analyst Purcell analyzed certain factors that are firmly associated to these factors and had common interconnected employee engagement in a proceedings that are related to their individual work.
Watson Wyatt explained that an organization that possess employees that are motivated morally and consider themselves as the integral part of the organization then the organization posts much better numbers in the finance generation than most of the other organizations. After a significant study by Towers Perrin it has been revealed that there is a direct and positive connection in between employee engagement and sales growth (Mani, 2011). As per the research which was based on about 35000 employees significantly outlay that the overall performance of an organization will always be impacted in a positive way if it depends on specific factors. It was revealed that about two thirds of the employees surveyed wants to be satisfied and grow forward in their jobs. Thus, it can be carved that a firm relationship of line managers-employee is the key ingredient in the retention formula of employee engagement (Neault and Pickerell, 2011). Therefore it can be easily forecasted that efficiency leads to overall success in the revenue generation leading to the revenue growth. Hence employee engagement is dealt significantly in high performance work organizations to strengthen the employee engagement. Some of the most important and key employment engagement factors that enable organizational performance are as follows:
- Intensify employee engagement via two-way communication.
- Provide assuasive opportunities for advancement and development.
- Provide all employees appropriate training (O′Callaghan and Pickard, 1995).
- Establish that employees have all necessary things that are needed to complete their jobs.
- Build a special corporate culture.
- Keep focus on the finest performance employees.
- Provide incentives, praise and recognition.
- Develop a strong performance management system (Pandita and Bedarkar, 2015).
- Establish leadership commitment.
- Build strong orientation and recruitment programs.
Conclusion & Recommendations
The aforementioned literature review provides a theoretical synopsis and analysis of employee engagement and talent management that helps the organization in achieving value addition, retention and organizational performance (Rivera and Flinck, 2011). The empirical evidence research provides a clear cut scenario about the necessities and importance of employee engagement and how engaging employees can be vital for optimizing and organizing the organizational goals and objectives. This enables to provide a gestural and conceptualized analysis about employee engagement and how much it is important in the present day to any organization to successfully continue its business in the global market (Saran, 2014).
It is mandatory for every organization to adopt the talent management and employee engagement strategy that fits the required competencies and skills of high importance to build the objectives and goals that are basically based on the conduct performance and strategy to provide necessary feedback to provide a sense of quotidian direction. Employee engagement initiatives always make employees more engaged and devoted with their specific job to produce ultimate returns. It is the management who plays the most crucial role to encourage the employees and motivate them to the social recognitions and self development opportunities (Systems, n.d.). Thus, in conclusion it can be derived that all modern organizations have understood the key of developing, attracting, retaining the talent and engaging the employees to survive in the global market which has become hugely competitive. It is the talent management that carves out the way for the organizations in improving the employee engagement which directly leads to improved performance of the organization. Modern organizations have focused in the areas of managerial and technical abilities that can make digressions to the organizations to benefit competitive advantage (Thomas, 2009). The human resource must target on the competencies and skills required to implement the training and recruitment strategies which will enable the organization to hold on to the talent and engage employees for the beneficial success of the organization in the long run (Truss et al., n.d.).
References
Ang, E. (n.d.). Employee Engagement. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Brajer-Marczak, R. (2014). Employee engagement in continuous improvement of processes.Management, 18(2).
Bridger, E. (2014). Employee engagement. London: Kogan Page.
Cervai, S., Kekäle, T. and Claxton, J. (2014). Employee Engagement. Bradford: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Cook, S. (2008). The essential guide to employee engagement. London: Kogan Page.
Crosby, D. (n.d.). Improving Employee Retention in the Public Sector by Increasing Employee Engagement. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Eldor, L. and Harpaz, I. (2015). A process model of employee engagement: The learning climate and its relationship with extra-role performance behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37(2), pp.213-235.
Garber, P. (2011). Coaching employee engagement training. Alexandria, Va.: ASTD Press.
Garber, P. (2007). 50 activities for employee engagement. Amherst, Mass.: HRD Press.
Garber, P. (n.d.). The manager’s employee engagement toolbox.
Gupta, M. (2015). Corporate Social Responsibility, Employee–Company Identification, and Organizational Commitment: Mediation by Employee Engagement. Current Psychology.
Hoxsey, D. (2010). Are happy employees healthy employees? Researching the effects of employee engagement on absenteeism. Canadian Public Administration, 53(4), pp.551-571.
Ibrahim, M. and Al Falasi, S. (2014). Employee loyalty and engagement in UAE public sector.Employee Relations, 36(5), pp.562-582.
Mani, V. (2011). Analysis of Employee Engagement and its Predictors. ijhrs, 1(2).
Neault, R. and Pickerell, D. (2011). Career engagement: bridging career counseling and employee engagement. Journal of Employment Counseling, 48(4), pp.185-188.
O′Callaghan, J. and Pickard, E. (1995). Reconstruction for re‐engagement: stress management for transition. Employee Counselling Today, 7(5), pp.20-24.
Pandita, D. and Bedarkar, M. (2015). Factors Affecting Employee Performance: A Conceptual Study on the Drivers of Employee Engagement. Prabandhan: Indian Journal of Management, 8(7), p.29.
Rivera, A. and Flinck, J. (2011). Employee-Led, Employee Engagement in the Federal Government: SAMHSA PeopleFirst. Advances in Developing Human Resources.
Saran, S. (2014). Employee Engagement: Leveraging Strengths and Underpinning Weaknesses (Identifying the Factors Underlying Employee Engagement Levels in an Organization). JHRM, 2(3), p.47.
Systems, S. (n.d.). Improving Employee Engagement to Drive Business Performance. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Thomas, K. (2009). Intrinsic motivation at work. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Truss, C., Delbridge, R., Alfes, K., Shantz, A. and Soane, E. (n.d.). Employee engagement in theory and practice.
Vestal, K. (2012). Which Matters: Employee Satisfaction or Employee Engagement?. Nurse Leader, 10(6), pp.10-11.
