ESM706 : Leading and Managing People : Flexible Working and Psychologi

Introduction:

The report intends to give an analytical study on organizational practices inclusive of flexible working and psychological contract. Hence, the study focuses on the organizational practices o the company called Ooredoo Oman Telecommunication Company. The whole idea of the discussion is to shed light on the importance of the two factors flexible working and psychological contract as to how these two aspects can improve workplace environment while increasing employee efficiency (Hickman 2014). Thus the paper begins with literature review highlighting different perceptions of the two above mentioned aspects. An extensive reading of different sources has been undertaken in order to show how the interpretations of flexible working and psychological contract differ from one perspective to another. The next part of the discussion throws light on the implementation of the two concepts in the chosen company since employee retention is a big challenge for this organization. The final part of the discussion gives recommendations in order to improve employee engagement within the organization followed by a summarization of the whole discussion.

Literature review

Flexible working

As per Bentley (2009), the term flexible working refers to the arrangement of working that provides employees a wide range of flexibilities in terms of timing, place and type. The provision of flexible working is given with a view of high efficiency from the employees and a higher level of engagement from them. Wolff (2010) suggests that the concept of flexible working is subjective. For instance, one might consider part time facility as flexible, other might consider working from different places as per convenience as flexible working (ter Hoeven and van Zoonen 2015). The major advantage generated from flexible working is that it makes employees valued at work which in turn increases their retention as they become more engaged with organization. In accordance with Wyatt (2010) there is a wide range of flexible working practices that includes part time working, term time working, job sharing, flexibility, compressed hours, annual hours, working from home, teleworking or mobile working, career breaks and zero hours contracts. There are other practices as well like self-rostering, self-swapping or taking breaks for the purpose of training (Sweeney 2015).  However most of the organizations adopt work from home, part time working, and flex time in terms of flexible working. As per Hickman (2014), organizations that provide the benefit of flexible working generally have more employee retention than the companies who do not provide the benefit of flexible working to its employees.

Psychological contract

As per Mcdermott, Conway and Rousseau (2013), the psychological contract alludes to the notion of perception of the relation between employer and employees in terms of their mutual obligations to each other. The mutual obligations can be sometimes informal. Rayton and Yalabik (2014) generally the moral obligations are inferred from the previous actions of the employer and employee or the statements made by the employer as well as employees. Instances can be given with the example of recruitment process where employer makes statement regarding benefits to be given to the employees. Guest and Conway (2002) states that there are two categories of obligations while some of them are considered as expectations, others are considered as promises. As per Mcdermott, Conway and Rousseau (2013), the psychological contract is completely different from the obligations in terms of law. While legal obligations provide limited benefits to the employees representing reality of employee relationship, psychological contract gives more than that impacting positively on the employee behavior from day to day work life.

Rayton and Yalabik (2014) further suggests that the psychological contract refers to mutual agreement as to what the employees need to do on their side and what they can expect from their employer or from the job. Hence, a mutual trust and confidence between the employees and the employer is the strong base of psychological contract. In needs to be discussed that when psychological contracts are broken or breached the areas that are adversely impacted are job satisfaction of the employees, employee retention, employee commitment to the organization and most importantly employee well being. The notion of psychological contract gives immense importance on the efforts of managerial departments since the employee relationship is extremely vulnerable in spite of their best efforts. Guest and Conway (2002) suggests that the entire liability of strengthening employee relationship and retaining that are must be held by them solely. In order to maintain employee retention, it is highly required that mangers take precautionary measures so that breach of psychological contract can be avoided. The psychological contract is evolved over time and according to employee needs. Therefore, psychological contract and flexible working are correlated with each other opposing the traditional organizational culture which provides less flexibility to the employees.

In accordance with Mcdermott, Conway and Rousseau (2013), the psychological contract has been becoming more important with the change of employer-employee relationship. As per the present notion of psychological contract, employer or managers need to understand the expectations of employees on a priority basis. As per recent research that drastic change imposed on employees by management have a negative influence on employees. On the other hands companies that give special attention on employee engagement by conducting fair practices achieve higher rate of employee retention and employee engagement.

Discussion

Employee retention has been emerged as a biggest challenge for Ooredoo Oman Telecommunication Company. Often, soon after joining, employees in the company leave their job due to several reasons like dissatisfaction, work load, less flexibility and so on (Arabianbusiness.com 2018). Hence it can be suggested that the two major aspects psychological contract and flexible working can be introduce in the organization in order to address the above mentioned issues. The company Ooredoo Oman is one of largest companies of Oman in the industry of telecommunication with 1000 employees turn over approximately. Hence, it is easily understood that the mangers of the company need to be more agile so that employees remain effective in their work. However, it has been observed that the mangers failed to make the employees engaged with the organization. While the organization needed to implement a flexible working hours so that employees can be able to manage the extreme work load, the management imposed more strict rules and regulation like proper dress code, timely reporting to office, no provision of work from home or any other place and so on. As a result, an outrage among the employees was seen since they felt less valued in the organization (Arabianbusiness.com 2018). The outcome was not limited to simply outrage of the employees, many of the efficient employees preferred leaving their job which impacted adversely on the major resource of the company, that is employee which called for an immediate attention of thee managers in order to address the issue (Businesswire.com 2018).

In order to address the issue of employee engagement, the management team of the company adopted the two above mentioned concepts, psychological contract and flexible working (Ooredoo.om 2018). Addressing the requirement of the employees for flexibility of work the company introduced flexible working under which benefits were given to the employees so that they can be more efficient and committed to the work. The practices of flexibility of working included mainly the provision of work from home so that they will be able to work from any places as per their convenience. On the other hand, along with work from home benefits, the employees were given two other benefits that are compressed hours and annual hours.

Recommendation:

• The organization must implement the Bridge’s change model in order to improve the organizational culture of the company. According to the Bridge’s change model, the managers need to organize meetings and interaction sessions before implementing any drastic change within the organization in order to avoid negative influence on employees.
• In order to maintain employee retention, it is highly required that mangers take precautionary measures so that breach of psychological contract can be avoided.
• The managers need to provide n effective communication system so that employees will be able to escalate their concern to the higher authority easily.
• The company needs to give special attention on the technological and other infrastructures in relation with work from home or teleworking facility.

Conclusion:

Thus, it is apt to assert that the whole idea of the discussion was to throw light on the importance of the two factors namely flexible working and psychological contract as to how these two aspects can improve workplace environment at the same time can increase employee efficiency. Hence, the paper opened with literature review highlighting different perceptions of the two above mentioned aspects. An extensive reading of different sources has been undertaken in order to show how the interpretations of flexible working and psychological contract differ from one perspective to another. The following section of the discussion elaborated on the implementation of the two concepts in the chosen company since employee retention is a big challenge for this organization. The final part of the discussion provided suggestive measures in order to improve employee engagement within the organization.

References:

Arabianbusiness.com. 2018. Employee Dissatisfaction reported in Ooredoo Oman. [online] ArabianBusiness.com. Available at: https://www.arabianbusiness.com/employee-dissatisfaction-reported-in-ooredoo-oman-628542.html [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Bentley, R. 2009 Go with the flow. Employers’ Law. May. pp14-15.
Extension of the right to work flexibly. 2009 IDS Employment Law Brief. No 874, April. pp17-20.
Guest, D.E. and Conway, N., 2002. Pressure at work and the psychological contract. London: CIPD.

Businesswire.com. 2018. Why Does Ooredoo Fail In Retaining Its Employees. [online] Businesswire.com. Available at: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180227005306/en/Why-Does-Ooredoo-Fail-In-Retaining-Its-Employees [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Hickman, A. 2014 Finding the right balance. Human Resources.pp26-33..

Mcdermott, A., Conway, E. and Rousseau, D.M. 2013 Promoting effective psychological contracts through leadership: the missing link between HR strategy and performance. Human Resource Management. 52(2), pp289-310.

Ooredoo.om. 2018. Annual-Report-2016-english. [online] Ooredoo.om. Available at: https://ooredoo.om/Portals/0/pdf/IR/Annual-Report-2016-english.pdf [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].

Rayton, B.A. and Yalabik, Z.Y., 2014. Work engagement, psychological contract breach and job satisfaction. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(17), pp.2382-2400.

Sweeney, C. 2015 The future of work is flexible. Journal of Management. 39(12).pp.89-91.

ter Hoeven, C.L. and van Zoonen, W., 2015. Flexible work designs and employee well?being: examining the effects of resources and demands. New Technology, Work and Employment, 30(3), pp.237-255.

Wolff, C. 2010 Right to request time off to train leaves employers unperturbed. IRS Employment Review. 3 March. 3pp.

Wyatt. K. 2010 Flexible working stretched to the limit. Employers’ Law. October. pp18-19.

Bibliography:

Looking after your carers. 2007. Employee Benefits. February. pp32-33,35-37.
Wolff, C. 2009 IRS flexible working survey 2009: availability, take-up and impact. IRS Employment Review. No 921, 26 May. 27pp.

Right to request flexible working: the new rules. 2014 IDS Employment Law Brief. No 998, June. pp14-19.

What makes a good flexible working policy in new era.(2014). Workplace Report. No 126, July. pp15-17.