An employee-centred analysis: professionals' experiences and reactions to HRM

Abstract

A key premise underlying research efforts about human resource management (HRM) is that it leads to improved performance through bolstering employee attitudes. The value of assessing employee reactions to HRM practices is now widely recognised. Using process models of strategic HRM, we adopt an employee-centred focus to explore the perceptions of a sample of New Zealand professionals with regard to HRM practice, attitudes, reactions and performance. Our findings provide support for some elements in this model, but not all. Although the relationship between practices and attitudes is strong, the relationship between reactions and performance is not. We conclude that the employee experience of practice is still a murky concept and suggest greater clarity about what this means, and how this could, and indeed should, be assessed is urgently required.

Keywords::

• attitudes
• employee centred
• employee reactions
• HRM
• performance

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

^1. In making this argument, they acknowledge that ‘other’ factors may also influence employee work-related attitudinal outcomes such as organisational commitment.

^2. Unlike the RAE in the UK, where academics from departments are selected for assessment, the PBRF averages the individual data of all academics within a department/discipline and awards the group a grade. These grades represent performance and can range from 0 to 10, with 10 representing excellent research performance. TEC (2006) acknowledge, when interpreting these grades, it would be near impossible for a department to achieve a grade of 10, and nor should a grade below 5 be seen to represent under-performance in the research arena. Our initial sampling frame saw the top 10 and the bottom 10 departments across a sample of universities identified for participation. Consequential to encountering issues with access to universities, we broadened our potential sampling frame. We did this by determining a range of appropriate cut-off points, based on the published PBRF scores, for our higher and lower performance groups. Eligibility for inclusion into our higher performance group was restricted to those departments that recorded a score of 4.4 or more, with our lower performance group comprising those departments that had recorded a score of 2.7 or less. These classificatory groups allowed us to source an adequate pool of potential participants, and more importantly, to be confident we had achieved a clear demarcation between our high- and low-performance groups.