Personalised Employee Relations in HRM

Introduction

Rationale

The basic principle of ERM is that an individualistic relationship is possible between employer and employee, supported by the utilisation of extensive database and communication technology (Strohmeier, 2013). thus, the fundamental objective of various previous researches in the field of proper application of ERM had been oriented towards creating more individualistic relationships which could lead to greater optimisation of the skill sets and knowledge of the employee by creating a set of working conditions which could be uniquely suited to the fulfilment of the needs of the working individual. Another objective has been to identify the methods through which employee loyalty and motivation could be increased under this type of HRM. This could be considered to be the original insight which could be strived to be developed in the corresponding research. Previous researches undertaken regarding the evaluation of the concepts of ERM such as employee motivation management and sustaining employee loyalty have brought forth the fact that it is primarily a complicated subject to ensure such psychological aspects within the organisational human resources (e.g. Minbaeva; Welch & Welch, 2006). Thus, the various dimensions and associated problems of the Employee Relationship Management would be the core focus of the subsequent research process. Such problems could be comprehended as that employees may not be disposed to trust employers (Armstrong, 2006), have different types of motivation (Welch & Welch, 2006) and suspect that employers are solely interested in higher productivity (e.g. Guest et al, 2006). This research objective could be better delineated through the analysis of theoretical models of HRM which could define two different attitudes of employers to employees: On the one hand, exponents of ‘soft’ HRM suggest that employees are sources of value to be nurtured to increase that value in favour of the differential business organisations and on the other hand, been suggested that current HRM strategies underpinned by digital technologies have been used to ‘market’ the value of the company as an employer and hold a large amount of information pertinent to the employment process. Such processes permit the employer to retain much of the control of the recruitment and employment process. It is suggested here that the scope of ERM as an effective HRM policy in the various retail industry is restricted only to the higher levels of employment of different business organisations and that employers would be more willing to consider personalised working conditions for employees with rare skills (Torrington, Hall & Taylor, 2008). This would be one of the research hypotheses concerning the research study process. Furthermore, this could lead to the realisation that employers would be less willing to consider personalised contracts for lower level workers. Further, the research process would also explore, in terms of the research investigation, the extent of the willingness of the various companies of the retail sector of infusing and maintaining flexibility into their overall employee management policy framework. This investigation would be reflective of the notion that although companies may be willing to market their status as an employer in terms of flexible working, the flexibility is likely to be restricted to situations which are favourable to the company, both in range and in the level of employment.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of this research project is to investigate the attitudes of employers to Employee Relationship Management principles in order to discover the extent of flexibility based policies which could be practiced in the employer/employee relationships. This is achieved by:

To determine the factors flexible policy utilisation by different organisations within the retail sector regarding the ERM procedures.

To investigate the extent of flexible attitudes which are demonstrated by different organisations regarding Employee Relationship Management.

To evaluate the measure of holistic approach by the different organisations regarding ERM improvement through flexible working attitude maintenance.

To assess the effect of the flexibility attitude based approach employer organisations on the organisational employees.

To recommend effective methods for the future progression of the research concerning the research problem

Research Questions

What are the flexible policies which are utilised by different organisations within the retail sector regarding the ERM procedures?

What is the extent of flexible attitudes which are demonstrated by different organisations regarding Employee Relationship Management?

What is the measure of holistic approach by the different organisations regarding ERM improvement through flexible working attitude maintenance?

What are the effects of the flexibility attitude based approach employer organisations on the organisational employees?

What are the recommendations effective methods for the future progression of the research concerning the research problem?

Research Hypotheses

H0: The employers have extensive positive and enabling attitude towards utilisation of the flexible policy based ERM methods.

H1: The employers do not have extensive positive and enabling attitude towards utilisation of the flexible policy based ERM methods.

The value of this research project to the development of HRM models is that it empirically tests a theoretical model of the employer/employee relationship in order to understand it better at an applied level. This theoretical model could be identified as the Pluralistic Employment Relationship. According to Noe et al (2017) this theoretical model under consideration is composed of four different perspectives, namely the view of the employees, the view of the employers, the view of the markets and the employment relationship nature between the employers and the employees. The view of the employees could be ascertained as the economic and psychological elements which transcend the materialistic and commodity based boundaries. Democratic rights and moral worth are the elemental constituents in this regard. View of the employers could be outlined as the intention of profit maximisation through the utilisation of organisational resources and the element of conflict of economic interests with the employees is an ever present phenomenon. The market based view is oriented towards the imperfect competitive nature of the market where imbalances abound in term sof the bargaining abilities which exist in between the employees and the employers. Finally, the employment relationship based view could be ascertained as indicative of the pluralistic financial interests with the employers and the employees being the leading stakeholders.

Literature review

According to Albrecht et al (2015) the Employee Relationship Management (ERM) model has been developed out of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which emerged in conjunction with information technology and communications systems (ICT) applications. Proponents of ERM suggest that effective individualisation of the working and decision formulation processes through the applications of ICT could offer greater prospects of motivating the employees to take individual initiatives in their tasks and could simultaneously transform the employer to employee relationship. The research of Tanwar and Prasad (2016) have outlined the efficacy of utilisation of improved methods of HRM within the retail business sector, within which the proper application of CRM could also be observed as a process to enable the organisational working personnel, in terms of communication skill management and improvement. Rees and Smith (2017) have specified this to be conducted within the overarching HRM structural working framework within any business organisation. The literature review also would be discussing the research conducted into related employment management issues, such as performance management and employee motivation and would be evaluating the different potential range of applications for ERM strategies.

Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relations Management (CRM) emerged as an alternative strategy to transaction-oriented management, whereby companies began to appreciate that not all customers were equally valuable to the business. This had been a marked departure from the previously considered approaches and De Menezes and Kelliher (2017) has specified this to be the initial step towards greater pragmatic and flexible management of organisational resources since, the employees could not be directed towards concentrating more on the identification and management of the most valuable customers. Moreover, attracting new customers was more expensive than developing a longer-term relationship with existing customers. This highlighted the changes in the HRM methods where CRM based training and sensitisation of the employees to transform their attitudes It was concluded that developing good, on-going relationships with ‘angel’ customers who were of high value to the company, could be a highly cost-effective way of maintaining competitiveness and increasing levels of brand loyalty. In this context, Prieto-Pastor and Martin-Perez (2015) have outlined that existing effective HRM practices could be influential in determination of the preferable attitudes of the employer organisations towards management of working relationships with their employees. This is profoundly reflective of the ability of the organisations to achieve profitability through better human resource management in the form of consistent improvement in the procedures through which recruitment and training of the existing and potential human resources could be undertaken. According to Guest (2017), the attitude of the retail business organisations towards their employees is analogous to that of the ability of the employees to develop and maintain a customer friendly organisational working culture. Such ability, in turn, is reflective of a double layered approach by the employer companies under which existing reservoir of skilled personnel could be enhanced through proper recruitment and furtherance of skills of the human resources depend upon the commensurate policy improvements such as utilisation of motivational techniques, availability of proper and delegated manner of organisational leadership, inclusiveness of the decision making procedures and finally, effective inter-personal and intrapersonal communication amongst the overall working architecture of such organisations.

The rationale of delving into such systematic evaluation of the relationship between the CRM and HRM could be identified to be dual folds. The initial, as could be perceived from the research of Bhat and Darzi (2018) to be the determination of the significance of CRM within the overall operations management framework. This has been determined to be the core of the business operations in terms of the retail business discipline under consideration. This has been also instrumental in leading to the second rationing of undertaking such evaluation and this has been the corresponding effect of the ability of the retail organisational personnel to properly manage customer relationships which, in turn, contributes to the development of favourable company policies and attitudes regarding infusing the HRM processes with optimised flexibility in terms of operational procedures. This involves the dual elements of recruitment and training the proper utilisation of which could further the skill improvement prospects of the organisational human resources. Studies into issues such as the psychology of brand loyalty, customer delight and purchasing intentions have become more sophisticated since the introduction of CRM, and the marketing fashion has moved on to market-led strategies, whereby companies are providing products which have been developed as a result of research into consumer preferences (Piercy, 2009).

HRM Models

Employees as assets

One of the primary differences which emerged in the conceptual change from personnel management to HRM is the notion of the employee as a company asset rather than a cost of production (Legge, 2005). There are two distinct ways of defining an asset in HRM terms: soft and hard. Soft HRM views the employee as an intangible asset which can be developed. The employee has an inherent set of skills and knowledge which are not only useful in their current form, but can be enhanced by company input, such as through training and development (Poole, 1999). The more an employee is developed and trained, the more value they provide to the company. Hard HRM views the employee as an extension of the company’s plant and equipment. In this concept, assets are been seen as units which need to be used in a way which will result in the optimum profit for the company (Tichy et al, 1982). Often this can mean exacting as much effort as possible for the minimum expenditure (Legge, 2005). Huselid et al (2005) divide jobs into three main types: Type A consists of key employees; Type B involves supporting positions and Type C indicates menial or unskilled tasks which can be subject to outsourcing.

Employment relationship management

Strohmeier (2013) describes employment relationship management (ERM) as a conceptual human resources model based on the original marketing model of CRM. The definition provided states that ERM is “…. strategy, programs and technology to effectively manage how firms relate to prospective, current, and former employees” (Rogers, 2008, p.48). This definition is significant from the perspective that this could provide the necessary insight of the constituents of effective policies of employee management through which any organisation could outline the general directions towards which such business entities could progress regarding existing human resource improvement. This definition also shades adequate light on the specifics of the identified research aim regarding the exploration of the attitudes of employers towards flexible policy implementation regarding employee relationship management since it delineates the factors which are associated with effective ERM. This is a direct reflection of the first research objective. In terms of communicating with prospective and existing employees, advances in ICT systems means that many large companies could not only effectively ‘market’ the company through dedicated websites, but, could as well improve the supervision and monitoring of their working personnel through enhancements of internal communication and data collection mechanisms regarding the individual employees (Bratton & Gold, 2012). Pennell (2010) notes that developing online recruitment processes as well as person centric evaluation approaches to determine the existing skill sets, motivational levels, operational capabilities, customer handling skills (for store management personnel), collaborationist effectiveness in terms of team work and overall dedication to the value of designated tasks as could be demonstrated by the performance of existing employees of the companies, the employer . Through websites, companies can develop a database of potential suitable applicants to be used at a future date. This process could be considered to be aligned with the second research objective. In terms of current employees, Strohmeier (2013) views ERM as a strategy whereby employees and organisations can work together to create mutual value (Schweitzer & Lyons, 2008 in Strohmeier), personalise working conditions (Gillenson & Sanders, 2005 in Strohmeier), and create mass customisation (Rowe & Tucler, 2006 in Strohmeier). In other words, Strohmeier (2013) is arguing that suitable application of digital capacity to customise working conditions on an individual basis is a way of optimising the value of each employee to the employer. He goes on to suggest that this individualisation process may be able to create a satisfied and loyal workforce. This form of suggestive yet in-depth approach is reflective of the third and fourth research objectives.

However as has been discussed above, CRM fell into disrepute as individual consumers began to realise that the relationship between company and low-level retail customer was being artificially created. In the same way, there is the possibility that employees in general will become increasingly disenchanted with a pseudo-individualistic psychological contract with their employer. In addition, although genuinely individualistic contracts may be possible in a limited number of senior positions or in SMEs with a limited workforce, it seems unlikely that the technological underpinning of ERM will provide substantive and meaningful changes in the way most low-level employees engage with employers. That is, although the employer may have a richer knowledge of the employee, and understand difficult aspects of working life, it may not be possible to transfer this knowledge into tangible conditions of work.

Literature Review Summary

Employee Relationship Management is based around the same principles as Customer Relationship Management in that it seeks to encourage individualised relationships between employers and their employees. This literature review has taken a brief look at the development of CRM, and how it was viewed by consumers. The review then looked at the basic principles of HRM and took an overview of related areas of HRM research such as performance management and motivation, in order to assess whether ERM brings new concepts to HRM strategy which could improve productivity or increased worker satisfaction and loyalty. It is suggested that although ERM may be an interesting hypothetical model, it does not sufficiently address theoretical issues for strategic HRM, such as providing a causal link between motivation and productivity. It is also suggested that although ERM may be suitable for a narrow range of employees, such as senior management (Type A) employees, it is likely to make little or no tangible improvement to the working experience for most of the workforce at lower levels (Types B & C). This research project seeks to gather opinions from employers as to the likelihood that ERM principles could be used within their company, and whether this application would be limited to an employee.

Methodology

ERM is an attractive proposition from the point of view of the employee.

The process of deciding on a method to use in research is a process described by Saunders et al (2009) as an onion (see fig.1).

In this research project, the objective of the research is to determine whether the population of employees in general would be likely to embrace ERM models by looking at a small sample of employees. However, the researcher is aware that the way in which the research is conducted has an influence over the results obtained and therefore the philosophical stance here is a realist one. The research approach looks at the process of creating hypotheses from data. In the case of inductive research, data collection process is informed by a loose idea about the subject being studied, but the hypothesis emerges from analysis of the data (Saunders et al, 2009). A deductive approach is where a hypothesis is developed first, and then the data collection methods are created in order to decide whether the hypothesis is true or false. Both of these approaches have issues: inductive approaches gather imprecise information, and it is often difficult to control for variables in the underlying causes of events. In deductive approaches, the creation of a hypothesis beforehand limits the scope of the research. Therefore, the hypothesis needs to be carefully worked out in advance so that the research questions could be applied to the data collection and analysis. In this research project, the hypothesis is developed in advance, and the data collection and analysis will seek to show whether the hypothesis has merit. Therefore, a deductive approach will be used. The rationale of the selection of this research approach could be discerned from the fact that new theoretical construct development is completely absent as per the identification of the research aims and objectives. Thus, it is necessary to synthesise the data findings derived themes to align the same with the existing research objectives. This task could be only achieved in the most credulous, pertinent and accurate manner through the utilisation of the Deductive research approach for the purpose of resolving the research problems effectively. The research strategy is the type of instrument which is appropriate to the research philosophy and approach. In positivistic research, strategies such as laboratory experiments are a typical strategy, where variables are tightly controlled in order to determine causal relationships between events. Interpretivist strategies include observation or interviews, where the researcher does not need to provide a true or false answer but is looking for underlying explanations for events as experienced by participants. Some strategies fall between positivism and Interpretivism, such as surveys. Surveys come in a wide range of types, and therefore can be very suitable to realist research (Saunders et al, 2009), and this is the strategy which will be used in this project. Interpretivism is utilised to develop a particular structural framework through which the research related essentials could be undertaken with relatively less research errors in terms of the interpretations of the research findings and collected data. Furthermore, the Interpretivism based approach could as well permit the Researcher to depend on the research variables only in a marginal manner and this could further enable the research process to achieve accurate data analysis regarding the identified frequencies of the collected data.

Surveys are also very useful when attempting to contact many participants to gain information in an efficient way (Saunders et al, 2009). This is particularly true in terms of digital communication, whereby many potential participants can be accessed at one time.

The data collection method being used for this project is a closed-end questionnaire. This means that the questions will be asked in a way that the answers are predetermined, and the participant chooses between a range of options (Saunders et al, 2009). The reason for selecting closed-end questions is that it is possible to apply quantitative analysis techniques in order to determine the spread of opinions. Quantitative analysis is based on the manipulation of data which is in a numerical form. The advantage of a numerical form can show how likely any particular response is, and how widespread this response is amongst the research sample. Quantitative analysis techniques, such as statistical analysis, can be used to manipulate the raw data in a variety of ways, such as determining correlations between responses. Statistical analyses such as correlations can be a useful tool for deductive research, as it may produce results which were unexpected by the researcher when the hypothesis was being developed. In this research project, the survey questions will use a Likert’s Five Point analysis scale for responses generated from the participants. A Likert’s scale provides the participants with a range of options to a single question so that the strength of feeling embedded in the response of the participant could be determined through the preference of one of the provided options by the participant. This could lead to the quantification of the responses of the participants in the numerical form based on response percentages . For example, Likert’s Five Point analysis scales for research data can run from 0 (where the participant strongly disagrees with a statement) to 5 (where the participant strongly agrees with the statement). Likert’s scale is also useful in survey projects because apart from the ease of understanding associated with the same, the resultant analytical outcomes could be converted to percentage based statistical graphs and charts through which the frequency of occurrence of the most highly preferred responses could be measured and statistical correlation with the research variables could be performed(Saunders et al, 2009).

Participant selection

The objective of the research is to find out the extent to which the intended companies in general would use ERM strategies. Therefore, the ideal would be to find multiple organisations within the existing retail industry . In addition, it is desirable to include companies which are privately run as well as publicly listed companies, and that the companies should be of differing sizes. Therefore, companies will be drawn from a business directory such as Thompson local, as it provides a large variety of company types and sizes. Given that the listings come in alphabetical order, this can be used as a randomising effect in terms of size and type of company. The proposed number of responses from companies is not more than five for the purpose of making the data collection and research performance a feasibility. These companies would be the top five listings of the business directories such as the Thompson Local and the Researcher would be approaching 10 ground and mid-level managerial personnel of each of the selected organisations. Primarily, the Researcher would be selecting all of such managerial personnel currently working within the selected companies as the research population, however, since most of them could not be expected to participate in the research process, this research population would be subjected to Randomised Snowball Sampling procedures where the employees would be categorised as per their task designation, age, experience and years of service in their respective organisations. Then, the researcher would be administering numbers, beginning from 1 to N, to all of these members of the sample population. The selection of random numbers to complete the research sample of 50 participants with 10 participants each from the respective companies, would be performed by the Researcher.

Reliability and validity

As the research instrument is being created specifically for this project, there is no prior evidence that the questions will produce the type of data that it intends to produce. Therefore, a pilot project will be undertaken with peers and friends to ensure that each question is clear and understandable, prior to the questionnaire being sent out for the main data collection work. The reliability of the data collected would only be apparent if the collection instrument was used in further research. Using an original instrument can mean that the results could be critiqued in terms of the way they were collected. However, it is hoped that the pilot will provide enough feedback to allow the instrument to be clear and easily understood when presented in the results.

Ethics

The researcher is responsible for the wellbeing of the participants in research (Saunders et al, 2009) and it is necessary that all reasonable actions are taken to ensure that the participant is not harmed or embarrassed by participating. One of the most common ways of ensuring that the participant enjoys taking part is to assure them confidentiality and anonymity (Saunders et al, 2009). The Researcher would be paying particular attention regarding the adherence to the stipulations of the Data Protection Act (1998), under which the Researcher would be legally obliged not to share the collected data and identities of the research participants to any third party without prior consent from the research participants. Data confidentiality and anonymity of the respondents would be maintained through dissemination of the developed questionnaire through emails to the participants and the reception of the responses would be performed in the same manner.

Limitations

As discussed above, closed-end surveys have limitations in terms of the type of information which can be obtained, and the richness of the information is limited. It also cannot say many things about the underlying reasons for the behaviour. Therefore, all that can be claimed in the results is that a certain proportion of respondents answered questions in a similar way. The responses can be correlated to one another, and this may produce interesting results, but it is not possible to determine the direction of causality through correlation analysis. This means that if, for example, smaller companies are more likely to favour individual contracts, this does not mean that one of these elements was instrumental in creating the other. Further research would need to be undertaken in order to ascertain whether companies preferred to stay small in order to hold on to a sense of individuality in employees, for example. In addition, this research project does not ask the opinions of employees. It may be that employees prefer not to have individual contracts, for example where a trade union may be involved. Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn as to whether

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