Question
Activity 1
Your CEO has asked each departmental head to undertake a critical review of their systems, processes and practices as part of a major organisational change agenda. You have been asked to review an area of HR/business practice and present a business report to key stakeholders with recommendations for improving practice. To provide the basis for your report, you have been asked to conduct a critical review of information sources relevant to the area of practice. You should:
- Select an area of HR/business practice and give the reason for your choice
- Undertake a critical review of different information sources (at least four) e.g. research digests, academic and professional literature, online databases, key texts relevant to the selected area of practice.
- Draw meaningful conclusions from the review of the different information sources.
- Make justified recommendations to named stakeholders for sustaining and/or improving practice.
Your report structure should include:
- Title page (report title and their name, submission date)
- Executive summary (overview, methods of analysis, findings, recommendations)
- Table of contents (list of numbered sections)
- Introduction (terms of reference)
- Main body (headings and sub-headings – these could be for each information source reviewed). Candidates should use a mix of narrative and diagrammatic formats to present their findings.
- Conclusions
- Recommendations
- Reference list/Bibliography
- Appendix if used i.e. information supporting their analysis but not essential to its explanation.
Activity 2
- Summarise the key stages of the research process.
- Compare two different research methods.
Solution
Selected Research Area: Evaluating Approaches of Improving Employment Engagement in Saudi Aramco Organisation in Saudi Arabia
Executive Summary
In modern organisations, the concept of Employee Engagement (EE) has been increasing in its prominence and demand. The rise in demand is informed by the changing modern workplace dynamics, customer needs, and employee diversity and inclusion. Therefore, in the modern business environment, irrespective of the business environment of an organisation (private or public), EE is critical. In this report, different studies irrespective of their approaches have been evaluated. From the evaluation, different recommendations have been generated. It is evident from these findings that employee engagement contribute to improvement of the level of productivity which eventually harness customer satisfaction. This is not the case for unengaged employees. Employee engagement is an evidence of discretionary behaviour among the employees which is identified as the ability of working for an extra mile to meet their customer needs. In the case of Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia (KSA) activities, the EE specifically in the current COVID-19 has a significant implication in their existence. Currently, issues with EE have led to the organisation reducing their capacity of leveraging on a competitive advantage, high employee turnover with failure of meeting clients services delivery in a timely manner. This impact on their customers satisfaction and readiness of executing their roles. In line with the soured primary data in this report, the organisation EE is as low as 50%. The different recommendations provided are the need to improve communication strategies, address employees meaningfulness in their work roles, employee motivation and wellbeing. Other recommendations include investment in L&D approaches and harnessing the employee voice.
Table of Contents
2.0 Critical Literature Review.. 5
3.0 Summary of the Research Process. 10
4.0 Conclusions and Recommendations. 13
1.0 Introduction (Terms of reference)
The research area in this report is the employee engagement (EE) research area has been focused. This is to note on the extent in which it can be adopted to promote the employees satisfaction and their performance. According to the definition of CIPD (2019), employee engagement is a strategy used to establish a common achievement in employee relations, appropriate resourcing with a guarantee on performance and commitment. For evidencing the level of EE in an organisation, Gallup (2020) report highlight that as by 2019, approximately 35% of employees are significantly engaged evidenced by their enthusiasm in their roles and commitment to execute their functions. This report indicate disengaged employees as standing at 13%. Also, a Clear Review (2019) report carried out through a focus on approximately 5,000 staff, using a UK case study, it found that 45% of employees are engaged. Comparing this with the Middle East where Saudi Aramco operates, it is evident that in Saudi Arabia has 25% of employee engagement and 20% in UAE. Evidently, organisations characterised with a high employee engagement is evidenced to have a high customer satisfaction (60%), active collaboration (40%), a leverage on competitive advantage (35%), profits (25%) and high-quality products and services delivery (20%) is evident. This is as summarised in figure 1;
Figure 1: Benefits of EE in Modern Organisations
In KSA oil and gas sector where Saudi Aramco operates from, it is clear that the disengagement level in this sector is approximately 40%. This is a major problem as such lower values of EE exposes the organisation into reduced retention levels, lower sales and quality of services delivery. To affirm this, a report by Engage for success (2013) statistical report had evidenced that owing to a 40% employee engagement with 60% being disengaged, an overall workforce costs of 630 million Saudi Raiar are lost. In line with this background information, the purpose of this report is to evaluate the EE concept and its implication on improving the customer satisfaction levels. The Saudi Arabia Saudi Aramco organisation has been used in this report evaluation.
1.1 Stakeholder Analysis
For identifying the stakeholders influenced by the outcomes of this report, stakeholder analysis is essential. A successful stakeholder analysis is best carried out through the application of a stakeholder matrix analysis (Shams et al., 2020). This is as shown in figure 2;
Figure 2: Stakeholder Matrix Analysis
As evidenced in figure 2, for the stakeholder analysis, in the case of Saudi Aramco organisation, the level of power and also the employees level of interest has an impact on their involvement in the implementation of recommendations to be provided in a later section. EE has a direct implication on the level of customer satisfaction in the oil and gas sector. This is specifically the case in the current COVID-19 pandemic which is not an independent situation that necessitate employees to possess an appropriate EE for all the identified stakeholders benefits.
1.2 Aims and Objectives
The aim of this report is evaluation of the EE strategies applicable in Saudi Aramco operations to directly contribute to customer satisfaction.
To achieve the highlighted aim, the following objectives would be evaluated;
- To conduct a critical review of literature on EE and its impact on an organisation customer satisfaction
- Evaluating the different practices that impact Saudi Aramco EE success
- To generate SMART recommendations on successful EE establishment in Saudi Aramco organisation operations
2.0 Critical Literature Review
Concept of the Employee engagement