Employee Insights into Perceptions of UK Organisational Change in 2014

Stream 4: Employee Engagement

Ross Kemble

Anglia Ruskin University

Working Paper: 4974 words

Abstract

The conceptual foundations of this paper, given the scarcity of longitudinal research on post - millennium work practices, emerge from the prior research by (Hassard, McCann and Morris, 2009) in the publication Managing in a Modern Corporation which considers current work practices. They observed increasing work intensification and change within multinational financial services companies post 2000 and suggest that work practices are returning to assembly line work: not only within the factory context, but also within other organisational contexts. This means that work hours, stress and responsibility all increased. Therefore it becomes critical to examine whether this trend will continue for employees and what impact this has on engagement.

UK employees’ lived experience are considered in order to illustrate the importance of perceptions of the workplace and whether they support concerns for ‘low road’ management approaches in terms of impact on engagement. Data was gathered from a single company within The Guardian (2014) list of the top one hundred companies in the UK’s East Anglian region, in an attempt to gain added meaning that employees hold for the changing work environment post-2008. A priori themes were used to develop an initial template, since the benefit of template analysis lies with its potential plasticity. Further sequential analysis of the interview template between every three meeting sessions allowed for adjustments to the interview template. This paper reports that the data collected concurs with the observations of Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009), further problems stemming from control, time frames and quality appear to raise additional issues. As such, the paper considers the possible impact upon engagement of the employees and thus the relationship to organisational performance.

Key words: Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Employee Perceptions, Template analysis, Employee engagement

Introduction

Improved employee engagement, as a crucial element leading to greater profit, has been regarded as a ‘holy grail’ of people management thinking, however engagement appears to relate to how ‘connected’ employees feel towards their employer (Keeble-Ramsay Armitage, 2014). This is where employees feel engaged with their work, direct benefits within improved customer service and resulting sales have been clearly demonstrated (Smith et al, 2012). Despite the claims that they can add value to stakeholders, the limited adoption of alternative ‘high road’ management approaches is disappointing (Hague et al, 2003). The question of ‘why is there limited uptake’ must be considered when examining this issue, and the answer may perhaps lie in the western financialisation of firms, leading to a capitalistic disconnect, which means that any aspirations towards ‘high road’ Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) work practices are undermined by short term / short view ‘low road’ managerial imperatives (Thompson, 2003).

The CIPD (2012) suggests that employee engagement is defined as an employee’s relationship with an organisation and its brand alignment. But is it merely a refinement of the much older concept of job satisfaction? Macey and Schneider (2008) seemed to struggle somewhat with the notion of engagement, suggesting that engagement was layered with inconsistent interpretations. This has been argued and readdressed by Wollard and Shuck (2011), who have offered a clear definition of engagement as “An individual employee’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioural state directed toward desired organizational outcomes” (p.429). Shuck and Wollard (2010) also suggest that the term of engagement could possibly be a passing fad among HR (Human Resource) consultants and HR professionals.

The role of employee perceptions has recently received greater attention in terms of its impact on performance (Cullen, et al, 2014). Examination of employee perceptions might also highlight the difference between what 'management' claims as policy versus what has actually been viewed from the workforce perspective. Furthermore, has the Global Finical Crisis (GFC) had an impact on HR management within the UK (see Colley, 2012; Kamp, Lund and Hvid, 2011; Teague and Roche, 2013) The Work Place Employment Relations Study (WERS, 2011) identified that work intensification has risen from 27% in 2004 to 34% in 2011 in the UK. The WERS (2011) report further presents that since 2004, pay freezes, recruitment freezes and redundancies within most sectors have led to ‘more work for less pay’.

This paper seeks to provide initial insights into the changing nature of the UK workplace, post GFC. It strives to engage with the subjective experience of the managed and examine any evidence of ‘new managerialism’ (Klikauer, 2013). By considering arguments that perceptions of ‘high road’ initiatives could facilitate a conceptual change towards an improved organisational focus, then it may be argued that a move away from any perception of a post-GFC, short-term focus of a ‘low road’ low cost approach is problematic in people management terms (Thompson, 2011). By contrast, McClean and Collins (2011) state that High Commitment HR practices are important within organisations. They suggest that social exchanges including employees are more likely to be co-operative when the employees that feel that an organisation values them and invests in them through HR practices.

Over the last 20 years, the UK has aspired to adopt more virtuous high commitment / high involvement HR-based approaches. These initiatives have potentially been restricted by the round of post-GFC austerity measures. A post-GFC, low cost or ‘low road’ approach may have replaced any prior strategies, (Thompson, 2011) such reducing the sustainability of aspirations, which could have the effect of hindering the UK’s economic recovery.

This study attempts to understand the nature of management behaviour within one company in the East Anglia region of the UK and aims to extend the current literature of this subject area by giving access in 2014 to the real lived experience of work engagement during the recent period of austerity. With this being considered, two research questions were attempted to be answered.

1.  What are the perceptions of change in working practices further totheGlobal Final Crisis?

2.  Are there any differences in the perceptions of the approach of management at differing levels in the organisation in 2014?

The research fills a methodological gap in the current literature, whilst researching a somewhat under-researched area. There appears to very little research done on the issues of management over this period, particularly from the employee’s point of view. The research explores the critical issues around the way in which employees have been managed and looks at how this has affected the way the employees have engaged with their work over this time.

Rationale & Background

The rationale for the research stems from the confidence at the start of the century that the workplace, from the employee perspective, was going to be enhanced by High Performance Working (HPW). Wood and De Menezes (1998) commented that the innovative current forms of organisations which are characterised as high commitment, high involvement and high performance models were central to many management decisions and human relations. At this time there was considerable optimism that post-2000 would see improved management behaviour leading to better productivity with Keeble-Allen (2007) suggesting that 21st century society would demand a highly skilled workforce and that employers would gain their employees’ commitment through High Performance Working (HPW) systems.

What was also apparent over the duration of the Global Finical Crisis (GFC) was the way in which the UK government reacted to the financial situation and how the coalition (Conservative and Liberal Democrat) Government chose to respond to the global credit crunch. Colley (2012) states that austerity measures implemented by the Government did not only make changes within the industry, but changes were introduced through practice and this can be supported by the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study (WERS) - Publications - GOV.UK (2013) with its finding that more work leads to less pay and the expansion of pay freezes in most employment sectors. Colley (2012) suggests that austerity does not only make changes within industry, it would seem that many changes have been introduced through amending work practices or processes (WERS, 2013). It appeared that some of the most notable areas relate to employee engagement.

WERS (2013) highlighted that even though there are fewer staff members, engagement had actually risen since 2004, with a notable increase in methods being implemented to increase engagement and commitment within the workplace. This was an area for further investigation as to why that might have been the case. With this increase in engagement, it could be assumed that employees also feel that their views are being translated into their everyday working life and decision-making processes, but this does not appear to be case in reality. WERS (2013) goes on to suggest that over half of the participants who took part in the study were not satisfied with the level of their involvement in the actual decision-making process within the workplace. So, in essence, the employees are being listened to, but those specific discussions are not being acted upon and are quintessentially ‘papertalk’. Authors (CIPD, 2013; Gruman and Saks, 2011; Macey and Schneider, 2008; Shuck and Wollard, 2010) found indications that companies have attempted to establish a robust link between engagement and profitability with regards to higher productivity, more sales, customer satisfaction, and employee retention. Furthermore, Anderton & Beven (2014) within The Work Foundation, acknowledge the tensions of currently constrained work which is characterised by high intensity, low control and low skill organisations and how this might in turn affect the culture of engagement.

Themes have been drawn from the previous work of Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009) ‘Managing in a Modern Corporation’ in which a monograph was created from previously published empirical articles and will act as a firm basis on which to revisit the themes of their studies in the post-2008 environment. The paper builds on the previous research by critically examining how the world has changed and adapted with regards to the recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC). By changing the context of the previous studies, the researcher is looking to examine a different timeframe and it is hoped that the researcher can really begin to understand the employee’s perceptions of this changing environment and how the employees are engaging with their work. The reliance on agency staff and temporary working is also something which was acknowledged and how this may affect the organisation, with Ward (2001) suggesting a further reliance on agency / temporary workers at the start of the century.

Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009) has suggested that their previous research pointed out that one of the key findings regarding the degradation of work related to the amount of work required to achieve, post 2000, resulting in increased stress and accountability. Possibly similar to the opinions of Braverman (1974) and Marx (1884) in relation to the changing nature of work, in essence it could be understood that Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009)sought to understand the likely important areas of how working life could be developed. Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009) suggest that there was little evidence of any likelihood for major organised resistance to an ‘over working’ culture. Moreover, McCann et al (2010) recognised the ‘dirty secret’ that corporate down-sizing and de-layering, apparent in the modern corporation, does not in reality actually improve productivity and that this must be understood so that pressures at work can be redressed.

Method

Access to the real ‘lived experience’ of the participants is certainly desirable, but the aim of repeating themes derived from Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009) demonstrates that work actually requires a degree of conceptual continuity. The researcher must assume that concepts extracted from these earlier studies have the same ontic weight in 2014 as they did in the pre-crisis milieu from where they originated. Bearing this in mind, there appears to be a need for ontological compromise between a fully constructed reality that is innate to the context of the current study’s participants, and the requirement that ideas taken from previous research contexts should remain meaningful.

After collecting themes, pulling them out of the original text by Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009), the researcher could then start to develop questions around the themes. At this time, the researcher felt the questions could be developed further through the template analysis. The initial themes chosen to use were adapted from the (Hassard, McCann and Morris (2009) monograph and they comprised work intensification, communication, job security, career management restructuring and GFC. These have then been enhanced by iterative steps in which the interviews are reviewed and some new themes emerge.

Due to the influences which impact upon the actual nature of a repeat study, it was deemed necessary to use a developing template to assist the evolution of a qualitative model of repeat study to pre-empt and to evolve new themes. Symon and Cassell (2012) suggest that template analysis is more flexible with fewer procedures, allowing the method to be tailored to a particular project. In contrast, having a more controlled repeat study and using a non-supple approach would have restricted the power of the present study because of its inability to establish the genuine, fluctuating perceptions of participants when viewing their interpretations of their lived experiences. Symon and Cassell (2012) identify three main deciding factors when choosing template analysis: a flexible coding structure, use of a priori themes which lead to development of the initial template. Thus template analysis was selected as it had been deemed the most suitable option for the research, owing to the potential plasticity of the interview template between interview sessions.

The Guardian (2014) top 100 companies in the East Anglia region were contacted by letter to enquire if they would be interested in participating in the proposed research. It was hoped that from this initial introduction, a number of companies would be interested and willing to participate. From this initial exercise, twelve leads were identified and relationships were built. It was decided that three separate case study companies would be used, each offering an initial insight, of which one has been used for the focus of this paper. It was presumed that the characteristics of the population would require around 7-15 participants to be used in each case, although it is impossible to predict the point at which data exhaustion will occur. Ten participants were finally proposed by the individual case study companies and it was felt that information would be collected regardless of exhaustion or not.