Rewarding Remote Employees Post Covid-19.

With the spread of Covid-19, most organizations had to move to work from home. With the ease of Covid-19 employers brought a concept called the “New Normal” which let the employees remain working from home. This happened with the organizations coming into the understanding that working from home, saves a lot of money for the organization. Working virtually gave the employees the freedom to do their jobs well anytime from anywhere and it allowed employees to know about other roles in the organization too (Lawler III, 2003). This helped the organizations to do their jobs effectively.

However, the organizations had to face the challenge of identifying and rewarding the best talents even though they work virtually. They had to find ways to move out of the box and think to develop a culture, which made the employees engaged (Newman, 2020). Rewarding the employees well for their commitment without waiting until the last moment will help the organizations to keep the highly engaged employees satisfied and let them feel the organization cares for them. Working virtually is not an easy task. Working hours and hours in front of digital devices affect the employees physically and mentally. It is the organization's utmost responsibility to not let the employees burn out (Todd, n.d.). Insperity (2020), talks about the Ten most common ways to reward virtual employees:

No.1. Be flexible.

The management should always think flexibly to get the work done by the employees. Once this is practiced by the management, and once the employers give a clear understanding of what needs to be done and when the task should be completed. Employees will do their best to do the task efficiently and effectively with a relaxed mind.

No.2. Know your employees.

Managers should always find ways to understand their employees. They can use online surveys to understand the habits of the jobholders. With that, they can understand what the employees need the most to be effective. For example, if a person can do the job well at night, allowing that employee to work at night boosts his/her energy. This is considered a reward for the employees in the 21^st century, and it motivates them to do their best.

No.3. Offer learning opportunities.

Organizations should think about employees’ mental and physical development because it is obvious that working remotely can affect the employees so bad. Giving them the opportunity to learn new things free or for a minimum cost, will help them to feel valued and have the feeling that the organization wants them to grow. This reward can encourage employees to do more than what is expected from them (Heaslip, 2020; Newman, 2020).

No.4. Give timely gifts.

If the organizations can give the employees some gifts from time to time like, having virtual family gatherings, allowing them to participate in virtual games, and giving them gift tokens to go for lunch, etc. will help the employees to have a smile on their faces. Having time to recharge themselves helps them to be more productive (Heaslip, 2020).

No.5. Don’t forget the company Swag.

This talks about sending a company-branded gift to the employees for a job well done. With this, the employees can market themselves and let employees know that the company appreciates their hard work.

No.6. Stay Connected.

Practicing continuously keeping in touch with each other’s in the organization always helps the employees to be engaged. However, these activities should be arranged in a way, which will not affect the employees after work hours (Newman, 2020).

No.7. Encourage peer-to-peer recognition.

This will help organizations to improve the team spirit even though they connect virtually. Knowing the colleagues and helping each other to grow by recognizing the best talents themselves will help the organization to have highly engaged remote employees.

No.8. Make it a team effort.

When rewarding the job well done, try to reward the entire team. This will help each team member to feel valued and appreciated. Having virtual capacity-building programs will encourage employees to achieve goals as a team (Heaslip, 2020; Todd, n.d.).

No.9.Provide a personal touch.

Creating a caring culture within the organization will help them to have highly engaged employees. The organization can send appreciation notes to the employees through mail to let them know that their sacrifices are appreciated (Heaslip, 2020; Todd, n.d.).

No.10.Embrace diversity.

Organizations should always keep in mind that each employee who works remotely is not equal. The organizational culture should be developed to embrace every culture so that employees will not feel left out. Management can organize activities to get to know each other when creating a diversity embracing culture for the organization.

 

There are so many other ways to reward remote employees and it is the organization's responsibility to research the best methods to keep the employees highly engaged. Organizations should act fast to reward the commitments of the employees. If the organizations can do this, the employees will do their best to motivate and train each other to grow as a team. This will help the employers to grow fast with remote employees and new technologies.

 

References:

 

Heaslip, E. (2020). How to Reward Remote Workers. [online] https://www.uschamber.com/co. Available at: https://www.uschamber.com/co/run/human-resources/rewarding-remote-workers [Accessed 25 April 2022].

 

Insperity. (2020). 10 ways to reward remote employees. [online] Available at: https://www.insperity.com/blog/reward-remote-employees/ [Accessed 24 April 2022].

 

Lawler III, E.E., 2003. Pay systems for virtual teams. Virtual teams that work: Creating conditions for effective virtual teams, pp.121-144.

 

Newman, S.A. (2020). Five Steps to Leading Your Team in the Virtual COVID-19 Workplace. Organizational Dynamics, 50(1), p.100802.

 

Todd, S. (n.d.). 6 Attractive Incentives for Your Offsite Employees. [online] Open Sourced Workplace. Available at: https://opensourcedworkplace.com/news/6-attractive-incentives-for-your-offsite-employees [Accessed 25 April 2022].

New Trends in Employment Engagement Post Covid-19 Pandemic

Covid-19, the deadly virus, brought the entire world to a sudden halt like no one had ever imagined. This virus limited human connections and this led the organizations to stop and think of how to move forth. Organizations lost their profits, lost their best talents and they struggle to retain the employees leading a lot of employees to lose their jobs. However, as Yadav et al. (2020) mentioned in their research, organizations started challenging the pandemic situation after some time and started to think new ways to engage employees from where ever they are to meet organizational goals and save the employees. Because of this, organizations started moving from traditional working culture to a remote working culture with the help of technology (Yadav et al., 2020; Saxena, Bagga, and Gupta, 2021; Nisha Chanana, 2020).

The fear is still there, and the biggest challenge for the organizations is to research, how to keep the employees safe and engaged. To become highly engaged the most important factors to be considered are the job role, the environment, and the culture. All the organizations now figure out that the concept of “working from home”, will never leave (Yadav et al., 2020). Though this is not a new trend, organizations did not practice the method of working from home because the team spirit, monitoring of performance, team meetings, and many more were locked in the frame called the workplace. However, the pandemic showed the organizational leaders how this would help the organization save money. With this being revealed organization started creating and using new platforms to keep the employees engaged to get a competitive advantage. Tools like Gamification, online books, online team building activities, online reward systems, online appraisal systems, and online challenges and competitions helped organizations to improve their mentality and helped them to be highly engaged and perform well to reach organizational goals. (Nisha Chanana, 2020; Yadav et al., 2020). Even though the employees work from home, the culture-tech platform helped them to get together in making decisions, helping each other’s, learn things, be creative, and to be innovative (Saxena, Bagga, and Gupta, 2021).

With the Covid-19 virus started leaving the world, organizations have focused on Phadnis's (2020 as cited in Yadav et al., 2020) idea, which is the “Hybrid model” where the organizations can have employees working from home and from the office. This trend has benefited employees to live their lives and balance work and life to the maximum. Baker (2021), talks about nine trends, which occurred post-Covid-19 that help the organizations to achieve goals.

No. 1: Increase in remote working

the study by Baker (2021), says that the number of remote workers has increased from 30% to 48% after the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore now organizations look into ways which improve employee well-being which will result in having highly engaged employees to meet organizational goals.

No. 2: Expanded data collection

Employers tend to use different software and systems to monitor employee engagement, well-being, and productivity. This has been there before the pandemic but there is an acceleration of employee monitoring tool usage after the pandemic to monitor the organization's performance.

No. 3: Contingent worker expansion

Organizations came to know that contingent workers help organizations to reduce costs during the Covid-19 pandemic times. The employers use this as an opportunity to reduce the number of full-time employees and now they look into ways of having contingent employees to have a competitive advantage and to save money for the organization. However, the study further says that the HR team in the organization should look into methods to get the best out of the employees.

No. 4: Expanded employer role as a social safety net

With the pandemic, most employers try to find ways to help their employees and families to survive the crisis. Not only the employees now organizations look into ways to help the community it is in too and that helps the organization to be highlighted in the business world and give the best for the employees to be highly engaged.

No. 5: Separation of critical skills and roles

According to Baker (2021), the pandemic has helped the organization to identify that there is no such thing as critical skills and everyone can be developed to play a critical role in an organization. what organizations need to do is help employees to learn new skills which will help them to grow not only in their particular role but in many other roles in the organization which will help the business to grow fast.

No. 6: (De-)Humanization of employees

With the pandemic, some organizations have put employee safety on top of organizational goals and some have put organizational goals over employee safety. Both have worked equally to bring benefits to the organization. Nevertheless, it is the employers’ responsibility to choose what is best for the organization. In addition, find a balance in these two ways that will help them to survive in the business world longer.

No. 7: Emergence of new top-tier employers.

With the pandemic, employees have started to be more and more curious about what is happening with the top management. In addition, the organizations that have practiced becoming more transparent with the pandemic have shown increased engagement levels of employees.

No. 8: Transition from designing for efficiency to designing for resilience

Organizations started looking for more flexible ways to improve employee engagement. People from various diversities started to be included in this process to have the best decisions, which will benefit the employees.

No. 9: Increase in organization complexity

To survive the crisis, organizations started looking into ways to increase the complexity of the organization, which gives them space for new employees with new knowledge and technologies to be creative and to be successful in the business world.

Even though organizations have so many benefits from the new trends that arose after the Covid-19 pandemic, they should still be careful not to exhaust their employees. Research shows that with the workload, employees now have to take level on weekends too (Yadav et al., 2020), which will lead the employees to be burned out. Organizations should work on having techniques to give the employees mental and physical freedom to boost themselves. Once the employees feel that the organization is thinking more about them even after the pandemic eases, other than achieving goals, they will do their best to take the organization on the growth journey.  

 

References:

Baker, M. (2021). 9 Future of Work Trends Post-COVID-19. [Online] Gartner. Available at: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/9-future-of-work-trends-post-covid-19 [Accessed: 21 April 2022]

Nisha Chanana, S., 2020. Employee engagement practices during COVID‐19 lockdown. Journal of Public Affairs.                                                                                                                                        

Saxena, M., Bagga, T. and Gupta, S., 2021, January. Hr during covid-19 era: Study on recent HR transformations through technological tools and trends. In 2021 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (Confluence) (pp. 110-113). IEEE.  

Yadav, S., Dubey, A., Chawla, P. and Jha, S., 2020. Employee Engagement Strategy for Employees Working in Virtual Environment in the IT Industry. 

The Impact of Leadership Styles in Employee Engagement

The leaders of an organization are responsible for having a group of engaged or disengaged employees. The leaders are accountable for growing or failing an organization. Employees or Human resources are the main component leaders should try their best to retain highly engaged to meet the goals of the organization. Batista-Taran et al. (2013) say that leaders’ efficiency and effectiveness can be seen through their employees. The organizational leadership team should work on a give and take the relationship to improve the engagement level of the employees.

Slack (2019) talks about four behaviors of a leader, which inspire and motivate employees to be highly engaged.

Employees trust leaders who both lead and follow
Leaders who are thinking every employee including themselves as Human beings have the capability to motivate their subordinates. If a leader is willing to get into the work along with others and guide them by being an example, the followers, love to help the leaders to achieve organizational goals together by giving the best to the organization.

Passion and positivity increase employee performance
The ability of the leaders to see every challenge and failure as an opportunity have the power to influence employees to do their best. These help employees to be motivated and to motivate each other too. 

Effective leadership prioritizes organizational health
If the leaders are capable of letting the employees grow and if they can act as good listeners, organizations can have highly engaged employees to improve the organization. if the leaders can think out of the box and make plans considering a better future for the organization, the leaders can create a healthy environment for the organization.

“Take care of your people, and they’ll take care of the mission”
Organizations should always think about their employee’s well-being. A happy employee will do everything for the betterment of the organization. If employees feel that they are not alone, they will never leave the organization alone.

Apart from these behaviors, there are so many leadership styles, which help leaders to become successful in the business world. Studies show that leadership styles positively influence the employees’ mentality to be highly engaged or disengaged (Li, Castaño, and Li, 2018). IMD (2021), shows five commonly used leadership styles which show to be effective in engaging employees:

1.Authoritarian Leadership

This leadership style normally shows how the output should be the leaders are known to be knowledgeable but when it comes to the employees, their ideas will not be considered by these leaders because leaders alone make the decision.

2.Participative Leadership

This leadership style too will take the decisions by themselves but they allow employees to give feedback and comments on the final decision after they decide on what is going to happen. Employee’s comments will be considered but it takes a long time to implement.

3.Delegative Leadership

If the employees are confident in what they do and are willing to take responsibility, this leadership style is the best to be incorporated because these leaders let the team members decide what to do. However, conflicts within team members’ decisions can lead the organization to fail as a whole.

4.Transactional Leadership

This leader works on a give and takes basis. The leaders create clear goals and the employees should work on achieving them so the organization will reward them for their commitment.

5.Transformational Leadership

This leadership style transforms the employees. They give a clear vision to the employees and help them to achieve their goals by motivating them, encouraging them, and working with them hand in hand.

In the 21^st century, employees look for organizations that allow them to be free to think creatively in achieving organizational goals. Moreover, they expect proper rewards for their commitments. Not only in terms of money but also in terms of recognition, praise, and many more. To have this capability, most of the studies call out the fact that the Transformational leadership style is the one that brings more advantages that are competitive for the organization in terms of employee engagement (Batista-Taran et al., 2013; Shah et al., 2016; Li, Castaño and Li, 2018). The attributes of a transformational leader, which are the Four I’s of this leadership style, help the leaders to transform the employees to be highly engaged effectively (Datche and Mukulu, 2015; BMC Blogs. 2020). The attributes of transformational leadership that boost employee engagement are shown in Figure 01 below.

Figure 01: The 4I’s of Transformational Leadership (BMC Blogs, 2020)

1.      Idealized influence attribute which is the ability of a leader to act as a role model.

2.      Individualized consideration, which is about the leaders being active listeners.

3.      Intellectual stimulation, which gives the employees to be innovative within the organization

4.      Inspirational motivation talks about the leaders being a motivator to take employees beyond what they see.

If the organizations can incorporate a transformational leadership style, the leaders will gain the ability to get into the level of the employees, understand what they want, motivate them to do what is best, inspire them, reward the best talents, and grow together to be successful in the challenging business world.

It is the leader’s responsibility to identify the best leadership style to be incorporated within the organization to have a competitive advantage. Most of the time one leadership style alone will not help the organizations to grow and meet the expected goals. The leaders should think strategically to come up with an idea to have a strategic leadership style to get the best out of the employees.

References: 

Batista-Taran, L.C., Shuck, M.B., Gutierrez, C.C. and Baralt, S., 2013. The role of leadership style in employee engagement.

BMC Blogs. (2020). Transformational Leadership in the Enterprise. [online] Available at: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/transformational-leadership/ [Accessed: 20 April 2022].

IMD (2021). The 5 Leadership Styles you can use & How to implement each. [online] IMD business school. Available at: https://www.imd.org/imd-reflections/reflection-page/leadership-styles/ [Accessed: 20 April 2022].

Li, Y., Castaño, G. and Li, Y., 2018. Linking leadership styles to work engagement: The role of psychological capital among Chinese knowledge workers. Chinese Management Studies. 

Shah, S.M.M., Hamid, K.B.A., Malaysia, U.U., Shaikh, U.A., Malaysia, P.S.U.U., Qureshi, M.A. and Pahi, M.H., 2016. The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Job Performance: The Role of Work Engagement as a Mediator. International Journal of Social Studies, 2(10), pp.242-253. 

Slack (2019). 4 ways effective leadership inspires employee engagement. [online] Slack. Available at: https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/effective-leadership-inspires-employee-engagement [Accessed: 20 April 2022].
 

Role of Technology in Employee Engagement

Technology has become one of the main topics of discussion when it comes to the survival of organizations. Every organization should focus on how technology can be used to become successful in the changing business world. Organizational competitiveness and Technology changes drastically increase every day. The organizations should work hard to identify changes in technology quickly and apply them to organizations, to have a technical competitive advantage. The use of new technology helps organizations speed up organizational products and services (MacCormick, Dery, and Kolb, 2012; Shaik and Makhecha, 2019). Nova Medical Centers (2018) highlights seven factors as to why organizations should include technology to become successful.

                        Staying innovative.

To survive in the business world, organizations need new ideas to be present to their customers. With the huge information accessing capability, organizations can be creative and innovative with a small idea in their minds. Being innovative attracts new clients and it will help organizations to survive in the challenging business world.

Computational accuracy

With the use of new technology. Organizations can systemize their data. The accuracy of these data is higher than the data entered manually.

Industry Efficient

Organizations should always be mindful of the technological updates happening around the world. Including the latest technologies in production will help the organizations to compete with other organizations.

Communicate better, collaborate more

Without wasting time by waiting for each meeting member to be present on the organizational premises, they have the capability to have discussions anywhere anytime with the use of technology which accelerate the processes.

Security and Safety.

In the past, stealing important organizational documents was easy. Nevertheless, with technology, organizations can have innovative high-secured systems that make the disappearance of important data impossible.

Maintain organization.

With technology, organizations can gain the capability to manage employees efficiently by assigning tasks, checking progress, communicating, etc. with the help of software. This helps them to have everything organized.

Increase employee productivity.

The management can always track the employees’ productivity through software and keep them update on the deadlines to achieve the company goals. With the evidence visible to both employees and employers, rewarding the best has become easy and conflict-free with the use of technology (MacCormick, Dery, and Kolb,2012).

Organizations that are not willing to take the challenge of technology have a huge chance of not achieving organizational goals in the current business world (MacCormick, Dery, and Kolb, 2012).

In addition, studies show that the use of technology has a major impact on employee engagement. Shaik and Makhecha (2019) highlight in their study that organizations now focus on Global Virtual Teams (GVT) to have highly engaged best talents connected using technology from all around the world. According to Writer (2020), employee engagement can be increased through technology by:

a).Collaboration through online chat platforms, which increases the involvement of employees in decision-making.

b).Use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) recognition through P2P platforms to help each other and grow as a team.

c).Use Gamification techniques that turn the job process into a game that gives the employees to enjoy what they do (This is more useful in employee training).

d).Improve Mobile learning capabilities for the employees, which will give them the flexibility to work effectively.

e).Allow Social-media engagement in the workplace, which will help in improving employer-employee relationships. This helps organizations to grow fast as a brand too.

f).Grant Technological freedom that allows employees to work on whatever device they want which gives the employees a comfortable environment to work.

According to the findings of MacCormick, Dery, and Kolb (2012), 48 percent of the employees use their mobiles to complete organizational tasks. However, the research further highlights that only 23 percent of employers provide employees with devices to be technically connected. Since the 21st-century employees grow up with technology, organizations should pay extra attention to new technologies to be included in the organization to win the talent hunt and retain the best talent. The management of the organization is responsible for improving employees’ technical capabilities all the time because technically updated employees will bring the best to the organization.

It is true that technology improves employee engagement and organizational performance if used correctly, but it has its negative impacts on employees too. Organizations should be careful not to burn out the employees with excessive workload and the organizations should work on ways not to have hyper-connected employees (Ter Hoeven, van Zoonen and Fonner, 2016; MacCormick, Dery, and Kolb, 2012). It is the Organizations responsibility to make their rules and regulations innovatively to keep the employees away from technology at least once a week. This allows them to recharge themselves to perform well.

 

References:

MacCormick, J.S., Dery, K. and Kolb, D.G., 2012. Engaged or just connected? Smartphones and employee engagement. Organizational Dynamics, 41(3), pp.194-201. 

Nova Medical Centers. (2018). The Importance of Technology in the Workplace - Nova Medical Centers. [online] Available at: https://n-o-v-a.com/blog/the-importance-of-technology-in-the-workplace/ [Accessed: 16 April 2022].

Shaik, F.F. and Makhecha, U.P., 2019. Drivers of employee engagement in global virtual teams. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 23.

Ter Hoeven, C.L., van Zoonen, W. and Fonner, K.L., 2016. The practical paradox of technology: The influence of communication technology use on employee burnout and engagement. Communication monographs, 83(2), pp.239-263. 

Writer, G. (2020). Role of technology in boosting employee engagement. [online] HR Katha. Available at: https://www.hrkatha.com/special/employee-benefits-and-engagement/role-of-technology-in-boosting-employee-engagement/ [Accessed: 16 April 2022].

Ethical Considerations in Employee Engagement

An organization's primary goal is to earn profit and to be successful in the competitive business world. However, as Managementstudyguide.com (2015) described, what is important is how the organizations fulfill their primary goal. This is where organizational ethics comes into action. Every organization should have its own set of values and beliefs that helps them to differentiate the good and bad, which allows them to choose the best (Courses.lumenlearning.com, n.d). Prottas (2013, as cited in Hough et al., 2015) simply describes that good ethics will lead the organization to become successful.

When it comes to the impact of ethics on employee engagement, research shows that there is a direct connection between these two components. Organizational ethics give the employees some principles and guideline, which tells them how they should behave in the organization to save the reputation of the organization and to give the best to the world (Managementstudyguide.com, 2015; Courses.lumenlearning.com, n.d). Hough et al. (2015), shows that to perform high, organizations need to work ethically to win the employee's trust. The study further highlights that the outcome(service or product) of the organization is an indicator of the relationship and trust between organizational ethics and employee engagement (Hough et al., 2015). Courses.lumenlearning.com (n.d.) indicates that personal, professional, and organizational levels of ethics directly affect the well-being of a company.  The study further explains that these three levels should incorporate positively with each other for the organization to move forward in the business world.

Personal Ethics

An individual’s own values and beliefs come under personal ethics. This is the trickiest level of ethics that businesses have to tackle every day. Each individual is grownup in a different way and it has a huge impact on organizational ethics.

Professional Ethics

Professionals gain this ethics with learning, experience, and training. For the employees to survive in a particular profession, following these ethics is so important. Professionals need to follow these pre-defined ethics because the profession itself expected them to do so.

Organizational Ethics

These are the Ethics implemented by the organizations. Organizational ethics have the power to influence the organizations' outcomes and employee engagement positively or negatively.

A few examples of ethical issues found in organizations are Fraud, Sustainability issues, diversity issues, and Exploitation. If the organizations do not Handel these types of ethical issues correctly. These will lead the organizations to fall apart (Courses.lumenlearning.com, n.d.).The leadership team of the organization has the main responsibility of creating a good ethical environment for the employees. The Ethical behavior of the management shows their core values, which will affect the way organizations behave (Toor & Ofori, 2009 as cited in Seymour, 2015). Managementstudyguide.com (2015) highlights that the leadership of the organization should always be mindful to work ethically which will improve employee engagement to perform well in the business world. Studies by Td.org. (2014) and Managementstudyguide.com (2015) further show that an ethical leader should:

a).Be truthful to the clients and employees so that this will return good energy to the organization.

b).Consider only the employee's work regardless of their diversity and reward them fairly for their commitment.

c).Never mislead the customers

d).Be able to get into the employee's shoes when making decisions.

e).Have a clear picture of where the organization should be in the future.

f).Always welcome others' opinions.

g).Welcome changes.

h).Find ways to reduce waste and engage the employees in planet-saving programs.

i).Always walk the talk.

These good leadership ethics will not only lead the organizations to have highly engaged employees but also help them to retain their customers and to give innovative products and services to the world (Td.org., 2014). Being an ethical leader will keep the organization safe from problems and have the power to reshape the organization (Td.org., 2014). It is always best for the organization to learn from their mistakes to minimize the ethical violations and to develop employee-centered ethics, which shows them that they are valued to have the best outcome in return.

References:

Courses.lumenlearning.com. (n.d.). Business Ethics in Organizational Behavior | Organizational Behavior / Human Relations. [online] Available at: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-organizationalbehavior/chapter/business-ethics-in-organizational-behavior/ [Accessed: 15 April 2022].

Hough, C., Green, K. and Plumlee, G., 2015. Impact of ethics environment and organizational trust on employee engagement. Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 18(3), p.45. 

Managementstudyguide.com. (2015). Organization Ethics - Meaning and its Importance. [online] Available at: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/organization-ethics.htm. [Accessed: 15 April 2022].

Seymour, T.D., 2015. Examining the mediating effect of ethical behaviors on the relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement. Northcentral University. 

Td.org. (2014). Consistent Ethical Leadership Increases Employee Engagement. [online] Available at: https://www.td.org/insights/consistent-ethical-leadership-increases-employee-engagement [Accessed: 15 April 2022]. 

Impact of Organizational Culture on Employee Engagement and Reward

Every organization has its own solitary culture, which shows its vision, mission, beliefs, habits, behaviors, values, norms, and guidelines (Paais and Pattiruhu, 2020; Deloitte Insights, 2015 as stated in Evangeline and Ragavan, 2016; Al Shehri et al., 2017; PossibleWorks, 2021).  Lauren (2015) describes organizational culture as a way of life of a set of jobholders. Research shows that employees working in organizations with good Cultural background feels physiologically safe and they believe that the culture of the organization shapes the engagement level which positively impacts the business performance(Al Shehri et al., 2017; Evangeline and Ragavan, 2016; Paais and Pattiruhu, 2020; REBA, 2019). In contrast, bad organizational culture will increase the loss of best latent, increase the number of disengaged employees and this will lead the organizations to not perform well  (PossibleWorks, 2021).

The leaders of the organizations are responsible for creating the organization’s culture (Lawrence, 2007 as stated in Al Shehri et al., 2017). However, the organizations should include employees to build a competitive organizational culture (Evangeline and Ragavan, 2016). According to PossibleWorks, (2021), organizational culture is important because:

a)         It helps the organizations to be unique

b)         It helps the employees to feel stable (Al Shehri et al., 2017)

c)         It helps organizations attract and retain top talent (Paais and Pattiruhu, 2020)

d)         It helps in improving employee’s level of engagement (Al Shehri et al., 2017)

e)       It helps organizations to have a set of happy and satisfied employees (Lauren 2015; Paais and Pattiruhu, 2020).

Lauren (2015) shows five factors, which affect the culture of an organization. 

Top Leadership Principles

The way top managers run the organization directly affects the guidelines set for the job holders in that organization (Lawrence, 2007 as cited in Shehri et al., 2017; Evangeline and Ragavan, 2016; Al-Tit and Hunitie, 2015) 

Nature Of The Business

The extent to which an organization can positively make a difference in their client’s lives has a clear impact on the culture of the organization. For example, if the organizations have a culture to value for their clients, organizations can have the advantage of being recommended to new clients, which will help the organization to grow fast.

Company Values, Policies, and Work Ambiance

The core values of an organization guide its policies. This directly affects the culture of the organization, which employees experience every day (PossibleWorks, 2021).

Clients and External Parties

The people who an organization work with is important because they have a direct impact on employees’ well-being. A good comment from a client can boost the satisfaction of the employees to work hard.

Recruitment and Selection

It is important for the organizations to recruit people who have the willingness to align their attitudes and behaviors with the organization's guidelines, which will help the organizations to have a competitive organizational culture (PossibleWorks, 2021).

The relationship between Organizational culture and employee engagement has become a key discussion topic in the business world because most of the research has found that this is a major, vital challenge organizations have to face to survive in the competitive business world (PossibleWorks, 2021). Lloyd (2008 as cited in Al Shehri, 2017) call out the fact that a culture, which improves communication between leadership and the subordinates, is so important to maintaining the employee engagement level. Evangeline and Ragavan (2016), highlight that Employee engagement shaped by the organizational culture brings competitive advantages to the business. According to PossibleWorks (2021), engaged employees are 21% more extra productive than the ones who are not. To make a group of highly engaged employees, organizations should give the employees a clear understanding of the culture of the organization at the recruitment level because the ones who can align with the organizational culture will remain in the organization for a long time (PossibleWorks, 2021; Lauren,2015). In addition, organizations should keep the employees updated on the culture regularly, to remind them where they should go in what they do to achieve the organization’s goals and feedback for employees in all directions will help them to be highly engaged and perform well (Al Shehri, 2017; PossibleWorks, 2021). 

Other than employee engagement, studies show that “Employee Rewards” play a major role in organizational culture too (PossibleWorks,2021; Al Shehri et al., 2017). Nacinovic, Galetic, and Cavlek, (2009), show in their study that 54% of the studied firms have Rewards as a core value of their culture. This helps them to be competitive in the business world.  REBA (2019) says that Rewards should be one of the core values of the organizational culture and the study suggest three important points organizations should keep in mind when building a competitive culture.

1). A culture of letting employees know that they are valuable to the organization by rewarding them for their contribution will motivate employees to do their best in achieving goals.

2). A culture that encourages peer appreciation is another way to increase the employees feeling of belongingness.

3). A culture that includes employees in creating the reward systems will help the organizations to let the employees know the reasons to be rewarded. This will help the organizations to encourage employees to do better in what they do.

A reward-centric culture will let the employees know that the organization values their effort, welcomes innovation and that their voice is heard when making decisions (Nacinovic, Galetic, and Cavlek, 2009).

The article of PossibleWorks (2021) shows some proven ways to build an employee engagement culture for an organization.

A). Check the effectiveness of the current reward system of the organization and make changes as soon as a loophole is found.

B). Keep the employees posted on what is happening in the organization. Reward them, for a job well done. Celebrate the success of the organization with all employees in the organization.

C). Check the organizational culture regularly with the employees by creating surveys and making changes to improve the satisfaction level of the job holders (Al Shehri et al., 2017)

D). Give the employees some space to improve their peer relationships. Experts say that an organization with this cultural habit will have a set of employees with good team spirit. This is a competitive advantage for an organization.

E). Let employees have a flexible working plan. This will help them to be motivated with what they do. The employees will feel accountable to return a favor for what they receive from the organization.

F). Create a culture agreed by all the leaders and employees in the organization. Make sure to have zero hidden factors included in the culture that will lead the investment to fail.

Nevertheless, the created culture for an organization should be challenging the work, make room for high-employee engagement, encourage employee and management relationships, reward the best talents, and welcome innovation (Evangeline and Ragavan, 2016).

References:

Al Shehri, M., McLaughlin, P., Al-Ashaab, A. and Hamad, R., 2017. The impact of organizational culture on employee engagement in Saudi Banks. Journal of Human Resources Management Research, 1, pp.1-23. 

Al-Tit, A. and Hunitie, M., 2015. The mediating effect of employee engagement between its antecedents and consequences. Journal of Management Research, 7(5), pp.47-62. 

Evangeline, E.T. and Ragavan, V.G., 2016. Organisational culture and motivation as instigators for employee engagement. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(2), pp.1-4. 

Lauren (2015). 5 Factors That Affect Organizational Culture | TruPath. [online] TruPath Search. Available at: https://trupathsearch.com/organizational-culture-factors/ [Accessed: 14 April 2022].

Nacinovic, I., Galetic, L. and Cavlek, N., 2009. Corporate culture and innovation: Implications for reward systems. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 53, pp.397-402. 

Paais, M. and Pattiruhu, J.R., 2020. Effect of motivation, leadership, and organizational culture on satisfaction and employee performance. The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics, and Business, 7(8), pp.577-588. 

PossibleWorks (2021). How Organizational Culture Impacts Employee Engagement and Performance. [online] PossibleWorks. Available at: https://possibleworks.com/blog/how-organizational-culture-impacts-employee-engagement-and-performance/ [Accessed: 14 April 2022].

REBA (2019). Three ways to build organisational culture around reward and recognition. [online] reba.global. Available at: https://reba.global/resource/three-ways-to-build-organisational-culture-around-reward-and-recognition.html [Accessed: 14 April 2022].

Role of Good Human Resource practices in Employee Engagement and Reward.

A Human resource department with good practices will always help an organization to move forward and be successful. Employees are the main resource any organization could ever have and the Human resource department of an organization is responsible for managing this valuable resource to get a competitive advantage to survive in the challenging business world. As clearly mentioned by Vulpen (2019), Human Resource (HR) professionals cannot stop their education after gaining their basic qualifications. They need to keep themselves updated all the time with what is happening in the business world. This helps them know the trends, grab the best practices and implement them into their organization to compete with the other organizations. Many research shows that good HR practices have a positive impact on employees’ satisfaction. These satisfied employees will do their best to give quality products to achieve organizational goals by being highly engaged in what they do (Pradhan et al., 2017; Alzyoud, 2018; Jose, 2012; Kerdpitak and Jermsittiparsert, 2020). Jose (2012) describes good HR practices as a “Forecaster of employee engagement”.   

Kerdpitak and Jermsittiparsert (2020), explain in their study that an organization's HR practices should include Employee training, Learning practices, and a strategic method to select employees to get a competitive advantage. In addition to that, Vulpen, (2019) highlights 12 key HR functions that will help the organizations to achieve organizational goals with employee satisfaction (Figure 01).

Figure 01 – The 12 Key Functions of Human Resources (Vulpen, 2019)

Vulpen (2019) individually described the function to get a better understanding of each function.

1. Human resource planning

This relates to where the business is today and where it should be in the future. It includes future planning regarding the people of the organization like employee recruitment, the number of employees the organization needs, performance management strategies, etc. which will give the organization the best output to be successful.

2. Recruitment and selection

This relates to the “Talent hunt” for the current business improvements. HR teams should look into ways to make the organization an employer brand so that they have the advantage of attracting qualified employees. Then to select the best of the best, the HR team should use new technological tools in every step of the recruitment (Anon, n.d; Kerdpitak and Jermsittiparsert, 2020).

3. Performance management

This is an important responsibility of the HR team where they have to include a 360-degree feedback tool the measure the output of the employees in the organization. It is important for organizations to create their future workforce through learning and development (Kerdpitak and Jermsittiparsert, 2020).

4. Learning and development

The HR department has the responsibility to make space in the organization to educate its employees. This helps them to retain the top talents of the organization with up-to-date knowledge. The HR team should direct the organization in the right way to get the best output from the learning and development investment for the employees’ future skills (Kerdpitak and Jermsittiparsert, 2020).

5. Career planning

If the organizations can assure its employees of their career growth or career path the employees will tend to stay longer and be more engaged with what they do. The HR department of the organization has this assuring responsibility which indirectly helps them to become the best employer brand.

6. Function evaluation

This responsibility of the HR department helps the organizations identify how jobs should be rewarded equally. The quality of work, place of work, availability of employees, responsibilities, etc. will help the HR team to evaluate the functions. To internally rank the functions of the organization the HR team can use the Ranking method, Classification method, Point method, and Personal methods.

7. Rewards

Rewarding the best talents for their work is extremely important for organizations to move forward in the current business world. It’s the HR department’s responsibility to identify new ways of creating total reward strategies for the organization which include intrinsic, extrinsic, financial, and non-financial benefits for the employees. This helps the organization attract the best talents and retain them (Alzyoud, 2018).

8. Industrial relations

As a precautionary method for an economic crisis or a fall down of the organization, the HR team should always look into ways to build an effective connection with the labor unions. This will help the organization resolve issues quickly as and when they emerge.

9. Employee participation and communication

Employee-related information awareness is a key function of the HR team.  This helps the employees to develop their people skills, motivation, and self-trust, which will help the organization to get a competitive advantage (Anon, n.d.).

10. Health and safety.

This is where the HR team looks at employees’ safety and health when they are on the organization's premises. The HR team is responsible for taking the precautions and all safety measures in the organization to ensure the safety of the employees (Anon, n.d.).

11. Personal wellbeing

Letting the employees know that they are not alone is another main responsibility of the HR department. When things do not go as planned, employees seek assistance from the organizations and the timely help given to the employees in need will encourage employee satisfaction, engagement, and quality of work.

12. Administrative responsibilities

Employee course of action and Human resource information systems (HRIS) comes under this function of the HR department. The HR department should develop strategic procedures to overcome organizational employee-related challenges (bullying, racism, etc.), and the HRIS which holds employee details should be up to date to make sound decisions on employees.

Finally, the organizations should always research good HR practices to implement within the organization, which satisfy the employees and attract the best talents (Jose, 2012). The top management should understand the Science of building a good relationship between the employees and the HR department (Alzyoud, 2018). Once this relationship is built, the organizations will end up with some loyal, motivated, highly engaged, highly satisfied employees’ who only wish the best for the place they work.

References:

Alzyoud, A.A.Y., 2018. The influence of human resource management practices on employee work engagement. Foundations of Management, 10(1), pp.251-256. 

Anon, (n.d.). BEST 7 HRM PRACTICES: what are they and how are they implemented? - HR Vision Event BEST 7 HRM PRACTICES: what are they and how are they implemented? • HR Vision. [online] Available at: https://www.hrvisionevent.com/content-hub/best-hrm-practices/. [Accessed: 11 April 2022]

Jose, G., 2012. Satisfaction with HR practices and employee engagement: A social exchange perspective. Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, 4(7), pp.423-430.

Kerdpitak, C. and Jermsittiparsert, K., 2020. The impact of human resource management practices on competitive advantage: Mediating role of employee engagement in Thailand. Systematic Reviews in Pharmacy, 11(1), pp.443-452.

Pradhan, R.K., Dash, S. and Jena, L.K., 2017. Do HR practices influence job satisfaction? Examining the mediating role of employee engagement in Indian public sector undertakings. Global Business Review, 20(1), pp.119-132. 

Vulpen, E. van (2019). The 12 Key Functions of Human Resources. [online] AIHR. Available at: https://www.aihr.com/blog/human-resources-functions/. [Accessed: 11 April 2022]