Individualised employee engagement practices and job satisfaction in British workplaces.

Ibukun, Tolulope

Abstract

Recent decades have been characterised with the introduction of practices that are designed to foster employee well-being, and promote an engaged and committed workforce by maximising employees' sense of participation and involvement with their tasks. These practices are employee-centred and include opportunities for: information sharing and reduced status distinctions; training and development; problem solving; and incentive pay. Through these opportunities, which collectively constitute "employee engagement practices", employees develop their skills, have greater influence over different aspects of their job, and are more creative and effective in their effort (Barling et al., 2003; Böckerman et al, 2020; Wood and de Menezes, 2011; Appelbaum et al., 2000; Zatzick and Iverson, 2011; Mohr and Zoghi, 2008; Hammer and Stern, 1980; Seibert et al., 2004). An important issue that has received little consideration is the possibility that individual forms of employees' participation in decision-making (both at employee and management levels) and other engagement practices are better predictors of job satisfaction than collective forms of participation and involvement. This may be true when employees belong to ethnic minority groups, as individualised schemes may offer opportunities for employees to exercise creativity and fulfil their potential. Moreover, effective human resource systems that explore the complementary potential of these practices have been suggested to be sources of sustained competitive advantage (Huselid, 1995). Milgrom and Roberts (1995), as well as Huselid (1995), argued that complementarity among these practices should be considered rather than focusing on only the individual presence of workplace practices. The importance of this issue - as well as the complementarity of practices in relation to the emergence of democratic structures and the pursuance of common good (which includes employee job satisfaction) - is addressed in this paper using the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey and the conducting of weighted logit estimations for nine forms of job satisfaction. The richness of the dataset is explored by examining various measures of individual forms of employee participation and involvement as well as incentive pay in comparison to collective forms. The results confirm that individual forms of participation in decisions at employee and workplace levels are important and better predictors of various forms of job satisfaction than collective forms. Also, the use of merit pay (measure of individual incentive pay) as reported at management level is negatively related to training satisfaction and positively related to satisfaction with involvement in decisions and pay. On the other hand, joint presence of merit pay and participation in decision through suggestion schemes are found to significantly increase the likelihood of satisfaction with involvement in decision-making, and significantly reduce the likelihood of training and pay satisfaction. Further analyses show the joint effects of merit pay and suggestion scheme are similar in workplaces that have formal EO policies. The novelty aspect of this paper is based on the fact that empirical literature on job satisfaction has focused on collective participatory practices, with none focusing on individualized practices. This raises the question of whether individual forms of participatory practices are better predictors of job satisfaction than collective forms, since job satisfaction relates to an employee's positive affective response to the job based on collection of beliefs and comparison of desired and actual outcomes (Aziri, 2011; Judge et al, 2012). This paper provides novel and rigorous empirical evidence, and adds to the literature on employee participatory practices as well as complementarities among these practices.

Citation

IBUKUN, T. 2023. Individualised employee engagement practices and job satisfaction in British workplaces. Presented at the 2023 David Marsden memorial conference and programme: employment relations and human resource management: building on David Marsden's legacy, 26-27 June 2023, London, UK.

• Presentation Conference Type: Lecture
• Conference Name: 2023 David Marsden memorial conference and programme: employment relations and human resource management: building on David Marsden's legacy
• Conference Location: London, UK
• Start Date: Jun 26, 2023
• End Date: Jun 27, 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 8, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 26, 2023
• Keywords: Employee participation; Employee engagement; Management; Decision-making
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/2072376