Interlinking Issues In Human Resource Management

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

In the last two decades, employees’ engagement has been given a great attention by academics and HRM professionals in the search for a more satisfying and productive work (Bakker et al, 2011; Bledow et al, 2011; Fisher et al, 2010; Kahn, 1990; Little and Little, 2006; Saks, 2006; Schaufeli and Salanova, 2011). Defined by Bakker et al (2008) engagement reflects high levels of energy and involvement in work processes and is measured by extra-role behaviours and commitment (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004). The literature proposes a vast list of outcomes of engaged workforce such as increased advocacy of organisation and organisational performance, greater innovation and better understanding of customers’ needs (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009).

However, during the times of constantly changing work environment, The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (Lewis et al, 2012) warns that increasing levels and pace of change make employees’ engagement very fragile. Paradoxically, people engagement is also claimed to be a driver for successful change implementation (Atkinson, 2005; Dvir et al, 2004; Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002). As Atkinson (2005) puts it, change can be successful only if those who take part in it want to drive it. Author proposes that even without a negative intent people are resisting changes due to the internal forces, motivations, doubts and anxieties. There is a vast literature exploring the possible causes of resistance to change, such as fear for uncertainty, parochial self-interest or low trust in the success (Bedeian, 1980). Research by Dahl (2011) provides evidence that organisational change correlates to negative stress for employees. He claims that despite an excessive focus by academics, consultants and managers on the management of change, organisations still are not able to regulate the change course completely. Employees are unlikely to explicitly discuss their motivations for resistance but will appear to be approving, making it extremely difficult to successfully create new culture from the existing organisation (Atkinson, 2005). On the other hand, it seems that given the right environment employees are willing to support organisational change (Wanberg and Banas, 2000; Herold et al, 2007). Sonenshein and Dholakia (2012) explore why some individuals are engaged with and contribute to the change, while others - resist. The authors propose that meaning making process plays a crucial role in making employees understand the change and find benefits in it, therefore allowing organisation to overcome resistance. Following the work of Bartunek et al (2006), Sonenshein and Dholakia (2012) argue that the potential contribution of employees to strategic change is overlooked and with the presence of open communications flow, employees are likely to become supporters who are emotionally engaged with rather than resisting a change. Committed to the organisational change workforce will share the vision (Dvir et al, 2004) which relates to a unitary force of supportive behaviours (Herscovitch and Meyer, 2002). Without the support of the employees, a successful change is hardly possible (Saldana, 2008; Atkinson, 2005).

Unsustainable engagement

Thus, if the benefits of engaged workforce are so apparent, especially in the times when the change is ever more prevalent, why do organisations still fail to successfully implement engagement strategies? MacLeod and Clarke, the authors of CIPD’s research on Engagament (2012), claim that only 25 % of organisations that implement engagement strategies see employees as the key drivers for organisational development and this is where the failure of the other 75 % lies. The majority of the organisations do not fully acknowledge its workforce as a key resource for the successful development; therefore the engagement strategies in such organisations have limited benefits (Clements, 2010). Robertson and Cooper (2010) propose that the possible explanation for the failure of engagement models is the poor design of engagement characterisation which does not consider the emotions of the employees in the first place. They argue that measuring engagement by commitment and extra-role behaviours (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004) is not sustainable, as commitment and extra effort can also derive from obligation rather than internal desire. Perceived engagement is not necessarily a reflection of how employees feel (Lewis et al, 2012) and it seems that emotions and the well-being of employees are barely included in the agenda of the top management and such approach spreads down and reflects on the middle management (Purcell et al, 2009). Even though emotions have become a common topic in management studies, ironically, the emotions of ‘everyday’ are understood least well (Fineman, 2005). Gourlay et al (2012) urge to differentiate emotional and transactional engagement – the first is based on intrinsic desire, and the latter – on necessity. Similarly, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) make distinction between affective and normative commitment and also argue that transactional sense of obligation cannot deliver long term benefit for organisations. It gives a valid reason for the CIPD (Lewis et al, 2012) to urge business and HRM professionals to combine engagement models with the consideration of the psychological well-being of employees in order to achieve the sustainable engagement of the workforce. As Robertson and Birch (2010) suggest, merely targeting commitment and discretionary effort without including the well-being of the employees in the agenda will not be efficient in delivering better performance in the long term. Indeed, employees’ engagement is strongly interlinked with supportive leadership (Xu and Thomas, 2010) and the psychological comfort (Fairhurst and O’Connor, 2010). Fairhurst and O’Connor find that overusing employees’ engagement is likely to negatively impact employees in the long run. Following their study, CIPD researchers (Lewis et al, 2012) called professionals to develop a more sympathetic approach towards the engagement of employees. However, CIPD is not the first to raise the issue of the inappropriate focus of engagement models caused by the clash between management-centred and employee-centred approaches. Conway and Monks (2008) argue that fundamental elements of employment relationships are often overlooked when more sophisticated approaches are empowered to increase performance. Therefore, in order to truly affect employees, the practices have to be focused towards the workforce rather than the management (Conway and Monks, 2008).

Rhetoric VS Reality

The emerging need for a more employee-centred approach strongly links with the urge by scholars to explore the issue of Policy-Practice gap – the failure of sophisticated HRM practices to deliver better performance (Purcell et al, 2009). Truss et al (1997) proposed that organisations using both tight control to manage the workforce and soft HRM rhetoric are facing tensions between the HRM façade and the reality of workforce experience. The authors claim that some organisations empower soft rhetoric to hide the opposite interests of employer and employees, and turn them into ‘willing slaves’. However, as Gill and Meyer (2011) argue, employees easily notice this policy-practice gap and therefore HRM is not able to hide employee reality to produce better performance. Indeed, Hope-Hailey et al (2005) explore the implications of a mismatch between rhetoric HRM policies and employee experience, and finds that the policy-practice gap impacts unsustainable organisations’ performance. However, even if the policies are genuine and organisation believes in the value of engagement, there are a number of unclear factors in the ‘black box’ [1] that might influence policies delivering unintended results. As Purcell and Hutchinson (2007) claim, the performance of the employees is strongly influenced by their attitudes towards organisation and its HRM policies. The authors emphasise the importance of front-line manager in delivering these policies and shaping the attitudes of employees.

Leader-Member Exchange

The importance of the employee relationship with the leader is not a new subject as it was introduced in the early developments of HRM. A social relationship in which individuals give a favour with expectation to receive a favour in return - social exchange (Blau, 1964; Drukman, 1998) gave a start for the leader-member exchange theory (LMX). LMX theory proposes that the relationship between member and leader will depend on their offerings and responses (Graen and Scandura, 1987) and a high quality LMX will be likely to positively impact further interaction (Erdogan and Liden, 2002). High quality LMX is claimed to reduce the levels of stress at work (Erdogan and Liden, 2002), positively influence employees’ satisfaction, commitment, ‘extra’ behaviours and perceptions of leader effectiveness (Lowe et al, 1996; Gerstner and Day, 1997; Settoon et al, 1996).

Empathy

In order to create a high quality exchange, it is argued that the relationship must be based on trust, interpersonal affect and respect (Settoon et al, 1996). Trust is a key element of supervisor-employee relationship and it consists of three components, one of which is benevolence – ‘the extent to which a party is believed to want to do good for the trusting

party, aside from an egocentric profit motive’ (Schoorman et al, 2007: 345). The first comprehensive study identifying specific leader behaviours that have direct impact on high quality LMX was carried out by O’Donnel and Taber (2012). The authors reviewed the previous research on LMX, surveyed 239 employees and found that the key predictors of high quality relationship were supporting, delegating and leading by example, ‘supporting’ having the most significance. They define this leader behaviour as ‘acting considerate, showing sympathy and support when someone is upset or anxious, and providing encouragement and support when there is a difficult, stressful task’ (O’Donnel and Taber, 2012: 147). Indeed, even four decades ago supportive behaviour was recognized as a key factor for high quality LMX (Graen and Cashman, 1975). Some scholars emphasise the importance of empathy, a key quality of emotional intelligence (Law et al, 2004), as a vital force of supportive behaviours and positive inter-personal relationships (George, 2000). Mahsud et al (2009: 563) define leader’s empathy as ‘the ability to recognize and understand the emotions and feelings of others <…> concern for the welfare of subordinates and willingness to protect, help, develop and empower them’. The authors argue that empathy directly impacts the quality of LMX. Even more, some suggest that empathetic ability is crucial to leading self-managed teams (Wolff, Pescosolido and Druskat, 2002) and has a high linkage with effective leadership (Kellet, Humprhey and Sleeth (2002). Gardner and Stough (2002) carried out a research with 110 senior level managers and found a strong correlation between emotional intelligence, such as understanding other’s emotions, and transformational leadership. Another research by Barbuto and Bugenhagen (2009) explored the relationships between 80 leaders and 388 directly supervised employees and found that emotional intelligence has a strong link to the quality of LMX. The vast research provides enough evidence of the importance of empathy as a quality of leader, which creates positive moods in employees and therefore influences positive perceptions and attitudes at work (George, 2000).

The impact of managerial empathy on organisational change

The importance of leader’s empathy is particularly relevant to the previously outlined debate on HRM policy-practice gap which is claimed to be influenced by two key factors – front line management and employees’ attitudes (Purcell et al, 2009). Significantly correlating with high quality LMX (Mahsud et al, 2009) and positive employees’ attitudes (George, 2000) front line manager’s empathy might be a key quality of a leader in reducing the policy-practice gap, building sustainable engagement and therefore overcoming deconstructive behaviours towards organisational change. HRM policies targeting engagement could be failing due to a lack of emotional intelligence in line managers which impacts the attitudes of employees towards these policies. As CIPD research funded by UK government claims, the barrier to engagement is ‘top team not wanting to hear how people really feel or make changes in the way they work’ (Mackleod and Clarke, 2009: 136). Even more, empathetic interactions at work build continuing reciprocal interdependence which Saks (2006) claims to be the key antecedent for a long term engagement. This sustainability of people’s interest is particularly crucial in order to keep engagement levels steady during the constantly changing work environment. For example, McKinsey’s report on change management (Keller and Aiken, 2000) proposes social exchange can be more valuable to employees than market exchange during the organisational change – employees might be more willing to return extra effort based on social reciprocity rather than material value offered. Other change management consultants (for example Saldana, 2008) also suggest that during organisational change, people mostly want empathic approach towards them and being kept informed, and because a successful change requires employees’ support, organisations must respond to these wants of the workforce. Indeed, Mayer et al (2002) emphasise that emotional intelligence skills are particularly important for managing negative events and rebuilding positive atmosphere. One of such negative events is organisational change which increases the levels of stress among employees (Dahl, 2011). As George (2002) argues – positive moods influence positive perceptions and attitudes; therefore, the ability to assess how others feel, respond and alter these negative feelings, is likely to assist in overcoming resistance to change. To overcome deconstructive behaviours towards organisational change, positive emotions at work serve in shifting cynicism to engagement with organisational change (Avey et al, 2008). As Coch and French described back in the 1948 (p.529): ‘A force induced by a friend may be accepted in such a way that it acts more like a person’s own force. An effective force induced by an enemy may be resisted and rejected so that the person complies unwillingly and shows signs of conflict and tension’.

Therefore, the previously outlined debates and research on the impact of engagement to organisational change, the importance of LMX to employees’ engagement and the role of empathy as a leader’s quality in shaping employees attitudes provide enough evidence to believe that managerial empathy increases employees’ engagement and therefore positively affects organisational change.