MGMT7063 | Management | A Literature Review on Leadership Skills

Employee engagement

According to Alagaraja, & Shuck, (2015), different leaders have their own way of managing the work activities in an organization. It is, therefore, crucial to analyses the different types of leadership skills and adopts the best qualities in order to boost the overall growth of an organization. As per the author Albrecht, Bakker, Gruman, Macey, & Saks, (2015), there are few of the crucial factors which help in evaluating the overall performances of employees associated with a particular organization. Before evaluating the factors that are important for employee engagement, the definition of employee engagement needs to be analyzed properly; it is defined as the approach of the employees within the concerned workplace in the right situations to provide their best efforts in order to boost the overall growth of the firm. There are few of the factors like job satisfaction, salaries, wages, performance appraisals, promotions and increment in the salary that helps in enhancing the effort level of the employees to work more efficiently.

Employee engagement is mainly based on integrity, trust as well as communication and commitment between the firms and their members. It is considered to be an approach that enhances the chances of individual employee performances, business success as well as the productivity of the firm. In the words of Caillier, (2014), Employee engagement depends on the organizational culture and if the culture gives positive impact then only it builds loyalty as well as the trust between the employees, and they feel comfortable to engage in their jobs. It has been seen at the concerned workplace, that the employees of the organization communicate with each other to maintain a strong corporate culture as well as to increase their engagement with the different group of members. In addition, the management team also given respect to each staff member by letting them know about some new strategies and also they listened to their problem. In other words, the management team provided the wages as per the stipulated time to build a strong employee engagement within the organization.

Employee turnover

Employee performance is dependent on the employee turnover rate and if the rate increases then many challenges will be witnessed by the organization in the upcoming days. As stated by Bedarkar, & Pandita, (2014), Employee turnovers is defined as the percentage of employee that leave the job and new employees are replaced at that position. Turnover mainly varies from company to company, and this mainly depends on the employee activity between the firms. It has been seen that in some cases the employee turnover increases and generates a negative impact on the productivity and profitability of an organization and this needs to be reduced with the adaptation of effective and suitable strategies. In the opinion of Bakhtina, Kirillov, Matyash, & Urzha, (2015), the organization sometimes encounters high turnover rate which causes a huge impact on the business, as a result the company faces many challenges in their production purpose.  The increase in turnover rate occurs because employees feel that they did not get proper respect from their fellow workers as well as suitable benefits from the firm. Even in sometimes the turnover increases due to the absence of proper teamwork as well as lack of proper facility. Thereby on increasing employee turnover, the company loses many flexible workers and they also face many challenges in the working procedure.

It can be said that proper strategy should be applied for the company to reduce their turnover rate in the coming days. For reducing the turnover rate, the company should start hiring the right people for the post. They take proper care while selecting a people for the desired post. By using this strategy, they have decreased their turnover rate from the past decades. In the words of Chen, Perry, Yang, & Yang, (2017), the company has also given standard expenses to the employees like accommodation, food as well as various other utilities. By following this strategy they can easily enhance the employee performance as well as can decrease the turnover rate from the previous period. Besides this, the firm also makes a flexible work schedule that helps the employees to complete their work as per the stipulated time, and they get extra time for their family. Hence by using this strategy, the company can reduce their turnover rate from the previous year.            

Employee commitment

It has been seen as one of the factor that affects the overall performance of an employee at the workplace. Employee commitment is defined as the critical perspectives of the employee performance procedure in their workplace, and the commitment level occurs only when the employee feel satisfied while working. In the opinion of Chen, Eberly, Chiang, Farh, & Cheng, (2014), the organizational commitment of the employee enhance when they get proper benefits as well as motivation and encouragement from their working place. The employee of the organization mainly follows the normative commitment. At the workplace, if the employees feel satisfied, then they work in the organization for a long time, but when their needs do not match with the organization procedure, then they break their commitment and leave the job.

Employee wellbeing

The author Fox, Webster, & Casper, (2018), evaluated the theory that employee well-being is not new but in the last few years it is seen that this theory is creating its way to the top of the companies’ priority list.  Companies are trying level best to make sure that their employers are satisfied at their workplace. It is said that a satisfied employee is always a creative worker. Many small companies are confirming that their employees have a good sense of well-being when the matter comes to the place of their work but when the question of health plans comes they are hesitating as it is estimated to be too expensive.

Positive leadership and Psychological Capital literature

Employee performance mainly depends on the leadership quality of the leader that maintain the employees of the firm. According to Gilchrist, Brown, & Montarzino, (2015), Psychological Capital played an important role in leadership research, and it enhances the employee performance level and it comprising of four different factors such as self-efficiency, resiliency, optimism, and hope. The positive leader always enhances their employee to perform their best for the firm at the concerned workplace. In an organization, the positive leader always encourages their employee performance and maintained a friendly relation with them. While in this organizational context the leaders of the firm are able to do their duty as well as responsibility towards their team members and this brings their positive engagement with the workplace. In the words of Hamar, Coberley, Pope, & Rula, (2015), sometimes the firm faces the problem as the leader becomes unable to manage employee needs, and this leads them to a high turnover rate. Besides this, the positive leader uses various strategies to enhance the employee performance so that they perform their best for the firm. These strategies have also followed by the organization leader, but sometimes their leadership strategies do not work, and at that situation, the leaders give them huge benefits like they provide accommodation, food as well as other utilities to keep engaging their employees. By this strategy, they enhance the employee performance working at the concerned workplace.           

Professional versus administrative employees

According to Anitha, (2014), a professional employee is an employee who is occupied with his work, mostly logically. It has been seen that at the workplace, an employee differs in character in terms of regular physical or intellectual work. It includes the steady practice of discretion as well as judgment in relation to its performance. Whereas, an administrative employee is an employee who is released from the provided statutorily overtime pay. As the employee makes an amount of $250 per week, the significant responsibility of such an employee is doing hard work that involves the policy of the company. According to Herr et al., (2015), an administrative employee is the one who practices discretion as well as the independent judgment at the time of performing its duty. The difference between these two employees at their workplace is that the administrative employees are made to pay at 1.5 times their daily rate. While the professional employees are not entitled to any overtime pay. An administrative employee can be paid the salary on the basis of hourly wage, whereas the professional employee should be paid a salary but not an hourly wage. An administrative employee is capable to earn any type of amount per week, whereas the professional employee is compelled to earn at least $455 per week. An administrative employee can work in any type of field, while the professional employee is restricted to some categories.

Emotional labor

As stated by the Huang et al., (2016), emotional labor is defined as the process of controlling the feelings as well as the expressions to satisfy the emotional need of a particular job. More importantly, the employees at the workspace are made to balance their emotions while communicating with the customers, colleagues as well as superiors. In order to achieve the target in the organization, specific obligations, and the rules of feelings, as well as the emotions of the employee at the workplace, is very crucial. The condition of the employee views shows a clear variance in emotional expression as well as the real job. Emotional lack of harmony may differ which determines the reaction of employees at the workplace. Conditional factors are significant but the perception of an employee is more significant than any other factor. Presenting the emotions that are essential are considered by the organization has become a significant factor related to the job performance. The performance of the employees on the job can be seen as the most general outcome of the emotional labor that the employee had invested. Moreover, it is believed that the real or fake feelings associated to present the emotional labor may have a positive or negative impact on the performance. According to some researchers, performing the emotional labor in relation to the natural feelings may have a positive impact on the performance at the workplace.

Blue collar versus white collar employees

The words Blue Collar and White Collar are work-related terms that differentiates the manual labors from the skilled workers. In the words of Hur, Moon, & Jun, (2016), the blue collar workers are those whose wore blue uniforms and have worked in labor-based jobs and the white collar workers are those workers who wore buttoned white color shirts and have worked in offices-based jobs.

Blue Collar Employees

This type of workers usually does various labor-based jobs who carry on their work manually. Some of their jobs needs high skilled and certified labors like plumbers and electricians while several companies’ hires untrained or low trained labors to do simple works like maintaining and cleaning the workplace.

White Collar Employees

This type of workers generally does office-based jobs and are highly-trained professional. Some while collar employees includes lawyers, bankers and accountants who offers proficient services to the customers, while some includes engineers and planners who offers services to various companies and government works ( Herr, et al, 2015).   

Level of education and incomes

The level of education is the main difference between the blue collar and white collar. White collar worker needs basic education while basic education is not necessary for blue collar workers. The white collar workers usually earns a good income compared to the blue collar workers. The white collar earns a handsome salary every month while the blue collar gets paid on the hourly basis.

Different generational cohorts

Generation cohorts is also an important context that has a huge impact on the employee performance. In the opinion of Nyberg, Pieper, & Trevor, (2016), Generational cohorts is defined as the different generation of an employee working in the firm, and thus four type of generation cohorts are present, but in the workplace, three type generation cohorts are present only. The three generational cohorts are Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y.  The other generation cohorts that are not used now in working place are known as Silent Generation and this general of people were born in the year between 1925 and 1942. The different types of generation cohorts are divided by age that means Baby boomers generation are those people who born in between 1943 and 1960, while Generation X are people who born between 1961 and 1981. In other words, Generation Y is those people who born after the year 1982. The author Othman, Mahmud, Noranee, & Noordin, (2018) stated that in the workplace about 8.5% of silent generation people are working while about 39.9% of people are baby boom generation. In other words, about 35.7% of Generation X people are working while 15.8% of Generation Y people are also working in the firm in current days. Hence all this percentage are described as the overall percentage of working people throughout the world. From this percentage, it is clear that mainly the Baby Boom Generation constitute the whole working procedure of the firm in the world.        

Different ethnicities

Employee performance depends on the ethnicities as if employee gets proper respect to fulfill their needs then it enhances their performance while if the employees are not benefited from the firm where they are working, then this sometimes influences them to show unethical behavior.  As evaluated by Parke, Weinhardt, Brodsky, Tangirala, & DeVoe, (2018), divisions between ethnicities always present in a workplace and this rise to a major issue in most of the organization of the world. Ethnicity is of various type, and it depends on diversity, race as well as gender. Diversity is good for business, but it gives rise to ethnicities in some situations. The employee often faces challenges in doing their work or communicating properly with the fellow team members and in that situation they often do illegal activities like give someone money to complete their work or does not interact properly with their colleagues. In the words of Reb, Narayanan, & Chaturvedi, (2014), ethnicity comes only when the employees feel as they are discriminated from others, and they did not get proper opportunity to show their talent. In that condition, employees wants to do unethical activities so that they can retain their position in the firm. Besides this, they often feel stressed for their job and do unlawful activities that create a huge issue for the firm in executing the business procedures. According to Vidyarthi, Anand, & Liden, (2014), the positive leader or the psychological capital is more or less related to the leadership development. By using the psychological capital, the organization forms a positive culture within their environment and enhance the effectiveness throughout the concerned workplace. It thereby helps the firm to enhance their employee performance, and it diminish their turnover issue in future.   

Conclusion

The paper concludes that appropriate leader will help the employee to enhance their performances at the respective workplaces in any organization. In other words, employee enhancement should be increased if they get proper respect from their superiors as well as their colleagues and are benefited with other facilities from the firm. With the help of this procedure the employees are able to enhance their performance level, and thereby it also helps the firm to decrease their employee turnover rate. Besides this, physiological and positive leadership help the leader to know about the process to increase the employee performance within the firm. Moreover, the paper concludes that generation cohorts and different ethnicities both make huge impact on the employee performance. For enhancing the employee performance, proper strategy should be applied by the leaders of the firm.

References    

Alagaraja, M., & Shuck, B. (2015). Exploring organizational alignment-employee engagement linkages and impact on individual performance: A conceptual model. Human Resource Development Review, 14(1), 17-37.

Albrecht, S. L., Bakker, A. B., Gruman, J. A., Macey, W. H., & Saks, A. M. (2015). Employee engagement, hu(man resource management practices and competitive advantage: An integrated approach. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 2(1), 7-35.

Anitha, J. (2014). Determinants of employee engagement and their impact on employee performance. International journal of productivity and performance management, 63(3), 308.

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Caillier, J. G. (2014). Toward a better understanding of the relationship between transformational leadership, public service motivation, mission valence, and employee performance: A preliminary study. Public Personnel Management, 43(2), 218-239.

Chen, C., Perry, P., Yang, Y., & Yang, C. (2017). Decent work in the Chinese apparel industry: Comparative analysis of blue-collar and white-collar garment workers. Sustainability, 9(8), 1344.

Chen, X. P., Eberly, M. B., Chiang, T. J., Farh, J. L., & Cheng, B. S. (2014). Affective trust in Chinese leaders: Linking paternalistic leadership to employee performance. Journal of management, 40(3), 796-819.

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Othman, A. K., Mahmud, Z., Noranee, S., & Noordin, F. (2018, March). Measuring Employee Happiness: Analyzing the Dimensionality of Employee Engagement. In International Conference on Kansei Engineering & Emotion Research (pp. 863-869). Springer, Singapore.

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Vidyarthi, P. R., Anand, S., & Liden, R. C. (2014). Do emotionally perceptive leaders motivate higher employee performance? The moderating role of task interdependence and power distance. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(2), 232-244.