Abstract

Both Academia and practitioners finds retaining human capital in high-tech organization is the key for the improvement in the long run. This study is meant to explore the level of Quality of work life in software houses. QWL improves employees’ involvement in human capital in high-tech organization like software houses. The secondary data is used of software houses in Pakistan to understand the relation and association between QWL and job involvement for the better employee retention. Results proved that the better QWL is implemented in software houses for the higher level of human capital job involvement. This job involvement is significant for the retention. Good strategies, planning and execution is needed for the improvement in the QWL for the long run employees retention.

Key words; Quality of work life (QWL), Job involvement (INVOL), employee retention

Introduction

In the era of globalization, employees are more interested in the work life balance. Quality of work life shows behaviour of employees for each other and the organization. In this dynamic nature of the high-tech organizational environment, human capital of Software House faces challenges. The poor environment is the main reason that resist changing environments and adopting up to date techniques. Quality of Work Life as organization environmental strategies plays the role of catalyst to enhance retention rate of the talented pool of human capital. Quality of Work Life plans are time taking processes but it necessitates continuous top management support and strong commitment among employees. Most of the studies have proved that job involvement can improve the retention rate of the employees. Employee involvement is achieved through the combination of job involvement and organizational involvement. Individual’s job management and managing their talent is a big challenge in high-tech organizations, as human capital wants to apply a body of knowledge without any obstacles. Number of studies are conducted on the significance of Quality of work life, whereas this study shows the significance of Quality of work life in managing the employees’ involvement to retain them for a longer period of time. Factor of Quality of work life can be achieved through individual differences, emotional intelligence and interpersonal development. It is used as the strategic tool for the organizations to retain human capital which leads towards innovative and engaged culture.

Literature Review 

Effective communication plays the role of backbone in employee involvement. Strategic leadership is required for the employee to get engaged with the organization having shared goals and shared vision. So working environment and organizational culture both are the key factors to involve employees in their jobs. The alignment of mind is very important to finalize employees’ involvement. Active listening, information sharing, discussing financial performance, encouraging team as well as individual work, encouraging employees for their suggestions, encouraging employee contributions, keeping employees jobs interesting and making positive solutions to employees problems are the imperative steps which enhance motivation and improve organizational culture. Every employee requires peace of mind, guidance at every point and a stress free work life environment for efficient performance. Nowadays talent retention is a problem specifically in high-tech organizations. Effective and efficient utilization of the workforce is a challenge for all software houses. Effective utilization and employee involvement is possible only if there are excellent leaders, having effective leadership styles to get maximum employees’ involvement and engagement. Relation and cooperation management is significant in the strategic alignment. 

Employee involvement and engagement has been defined as an employee’s emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization’s goals and missions (Baumruk, 2004; Richman, 2006; Shaw, 2005) or the maximum effort exhibited by employees to perform their jobs (Frank et al., 2004). Kahn (1990) named involvement as the psychological fact about how a person gets involved with their job having passion for work! He also suggested that emotionally engaging employees for their particular job is involvement. The sense of the individual that how much he/she is important for the organization…! always a source of recognition for the employee. Bakker & Bal (2010) founded that variability exist in job resources (autonomy, social support, performance feedback, supervisory coaching, and learning opportunities), work engagement and performance. Training and development plays a significant role for the employees’ encouragement, interaction and future successful behaviours. Now the question is how to get long term employee involvement with shared theme of organizational goals and vision. Kahn (1990) found that all kind of involvements are based on three questions

1. how is it meaningful for me to bring performance?
2. how safe is it to do so?
3. how available am I to do so?

May et al. (2004) founded that all these questions are significantly related to employee involvement. So it is very necessary for employees to let them know about how much a job is meaningful to them? What kind of safety is here for them? How much potential does he/she have to do that job? All the combination of these questions would lead an employee toward an emotional and involved relationship with his/her job. Talent under the roof of competitive rewards and compensation is the good combination to make employees a strategic asset for high-tech organizations.

Goleman (1998) who was the guru of emotional intelligence, defined emotional intelligence as ”being able to motivate yourself to get a job done, being creative and performing at your peak”. Emotional intelligence and employee involvement are closely related. Emotional intelligence is basically about self-management, self-awareness and relationship management. The relationships between the organization and employees are important to manage properly for the active achievement of organizational involvement. In today’s modern environment, employee involvement is directly related to the organizational competitive environment. The organizational communication, organizational intelligence and thinking strategically lead an organization toward prosperity. These competent commitments and attachments can be achieved with help of the involvement of their employees.  

There are many reasons for individual differences because of difference in nature in individual characteristics. Robinson (2006) argued that the individual differences play a vital role in determining an employee’s potential level of involvement with organizations. He also explained that every individual categories, events and solutions are different according to their own unique frame of reference which reflects individuals’ personality, past experiences, knowledge, current needs and interests. According to his theory, the level of involvement varies with the individual characteristics. So, this can be concluded that it is external environment and individual’s perception that leads an employee to involvement or lack of involvement. Job involvement assists for the best utilization of resources and facilities. Feelings regarding a job are dealt with internal feedback and external realities. The decline in employee involvement leads an organization toward distress and more critical conditions. 

Secure working environment leads to effective productivity. On the other hand, a stressful environment leads to many complexities in performance management systems. The employees’ involvement leads toward decrease in the level of stress and improvement in the performance management system. Heavy majority of employees want to leave their jobs due to unsatisfactory and lack of involved relationship with their job and high workloads. Actively involved employees are more committed and satisfied with the job for the productive and performance efforts of the company. Perrins (2008)  study of employee involvements and engagements identified both emotions and rationality as core components. He found that emotional factors are linked to individual involvement, satisfaction and sense of inspiration. If employees understand their role according to the objective of the company; then employees think and perform greater than the expectation. He also showed the significance of management action in determining the level of employee involvement. It was found that benefits, pays and incentives play less important roles in employees’ involvement. But the compensation and rewards cannot be ignored in any aspect. If there are two groups for researchers, one said that the environment has a greater effect on the other hand, the second said that individual differences do matter in employee involvement. Then according to the result, individual differences have greater influence on the outcome variables. To manage the individual differences and individual involvement is the most complex task. Empowerment is considered as an effective tool to manage individual differences. It is always said that no one is going to love you if you don’t love yourself. Celebrate your past, indulge in what makes you happy, let go of your mistakes, believe in yourself, embrace your future, dive into your passion, live your life so you are proud of yourself, sign your own praises, listen to your ideas, appreciate your life. If the employees are highly involved in the intrapersonal communication they will be highly motivated by getting the answer that ‘what is in for me?’. 

Communication from top to down and from down to up both are very important to judge the employee involvement and their level of trust. Seijts and Crim (2006) divided his study into three categories;

1. engaged employees; work with passion and are profoundly connected to the organization values
2. not engaged; put time but not passion in their work and they are not connected to the organizational values
3. actively disengaged; employee busy to act out their unhappiness and undermine what their involved colleagues try to accomplish.

All the organizational involvements and dis-involvement are due to effective and ineffective communication respectively. It can be clearly stated that communication and knowledge sharing is very important at each level of job. In the supposed supportive culture having effective communication, the organization can get more involved employees. Sacks (2006) found that employee involvement is sustainable with justified workload, feelings of the choice and control, recognition, fairness and justice, supportive work community and meaningful and valued work. These value additions in the job are very important for the work as well as for the employee to get the job properly done. Robinson (2006) from the employment studies attribute described the 6 characteristics of employee involvement and engagement;

• belief in the organization
• desire to work and make things better.
• understanding of business context and the ‘bigger picture’.
• presence of respectful and helpful colleagues.
• willing to go extra mile.
• keeping up to date with developments in the field.

They also found that only wish for employee involvement and engagement is not urgent; there are some efforts to be done for employee involvement like good quality line management, two ways communication, effective internal co-operation, developmental focus, commitment to employee well-being and clear accessible HRM policies to involve employees. 

Effective communication is very important to understand the employees in a respectful manner. As communication is the backbone to understand the psychology, employees must be effectively communicated to understand the problems of commitments and engagements. Chances of better future, development and improvement encourages employee involvement. Alignment of employees’ goals and organizational goals play a significant role in the success of the organization. The “involvement gap” is due to poor communication and it will lead towards psychological distress and problems. White (2012) discussed that poor organizational involvement results in poor team culture, increase in turnover, decreased employee empowerment and unsatisfied performance. He also found some excellent communication tips;

• set realistic goals and be transparent with you teams about expectation.
• open the lines of communication and meet regularly with the employees to provide them feedback and facilities status reports
• establish a recognition rhythm and using power of “thank you” to reinforce positive results.

If there is excellent balanced employees’ involvement, then there would be proactive team culture, better empowerment and satisfied performance. Beyond the conventional model of command and control, the leaders must involve all the employees in the jobs to get the maximum output. Organizational culture is also an important component to get employee involvement. Culture that has effective communication leads toward satisfied work environment and more supportive culture. Koerner (2006) found the most critical attributes are;

• Leaders must understand and support
• Uncover the elements that are core requirements and demands (mention why? and when?)
• Measure the real progress and return on investments.

She also suggested communicators are real leaders

1. senior management needs to believe in the importance of involvement and continuously make efforts for improvement.
2. Managers need to take employee involvement survey results seriously
3. the most effective way of doing this is to make managers accountable for the employee involvement scores of their staff. 

In high-tech organizations, the involvement of the employees means the achievement of success. Now the question is “How to involve employees?” with the culture, manager, colleagues and organization goals and mission. For the active involvement and engagement of the employees, rewards and compensations, working environment and culture, flexible working hours, job security, social interaction among employees, timely training and development, empowerment and true provision of resources and facilities play a significant role. In other words all these constructs of quality of work life make the employees involved with the working environment of the organization. This organizational involvement is significant for the retention of human capital. It helps to give the shared goals and shared vision and mission to each individual employee for the active involvement and building the level of trust. So this can be concluded that the employee engagement and empowerment and satisfaction is based on the relationship and leadership (Sheridan & Vredenburgh, 1978; Ribelin, 2003; Eisenberger et al., 2002; Rhoades et al., 2001). The study suggested that management practices effects satisfaction and satisfaction leads toward high performance, results, productivity and profitability (Harter et al., 2002). Roberts (2011) suggested 5 prove strategies for leaders to employees’ involvement;

• start with small wins.
• have empathy for non-believers
• make it fun
• keep it simple
• stick with it.

He also suggested for the sustainable leaders these strategies plays very important role for employees’ involvement and engagement. Harbeke (2011) suggested “winning workplace social media policy” to be the workplace hero. According to his suggestions, the social media within organization is very important nowadays. Specifically in high-tech organizations, the social media policy is the one of the best involvement strategies. In the software-houses of Pakistan, specifically the software houses spend thousands of dollars for the employees’ empowerment, working environment and culture, relation and corporation, training and development, rewards & compensations, job security, flexible working hours and adequacy of resources and facilities for the software developers’ job involvement.   

DATA ANALYSIS

This study is based on qualitative analysis. Secondary data is used in this study about the IT sector of Pakistan (Hussain & Saleem, 2014). Sample size is 260. The data is summarized through the google survey excel worksheets. The data is collected in the 5 likert scale 1=strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3=neutral, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree

Hypothesis: these are statistical hypotheses that are associated with the proposed research.

• Quality of work life (QWL) is positively associated with Job Involvement (INVOL)
• Quality of work life (QWL) has significant relationship with Job Involvement (INVOL)

Association of QWL to the Job involvement

This figure 1.1 shows the relationship between Quality of Work Life (QWL) and job involvement. Figure 1.1 also shows that improvement in QWL conditions improves the employees job involvement. 

Person’s Correlation analysis is done between QWL and employee Job involvement. This analysis is done to understand the association between QWL and employees’ job involvement. Association of employee Job Involvement (INVOL) with organizational working environment and organizational culture (W.ENV),relation and cooperation (RELAT), training and development (TRAIN), rewards and compensations (REWD), Adequate Resources and Facilities (A.R.F), Job security (SCURE), empowerment (EMPR) and  flexible working hours (FLEX) are r=0.762, 0.745, 0.794, 0.753, 0.742, 0.648, 0.704 and 0.693 respectively. The average of these R-values is 0.730.

Closer value to the +1 is showing the strong positive association between job involvement(INVOL) and Quality of Work Life(QWL). In short, the workforce can be involved in their work by improving these facilities in the working environment.

Relationship between Quality of Work Life and Job involvement

This table 1.2 shows the positive relationship between quality of work life and job involvement.

The p-value of ANOVA is 0.000 which indicates the model is highly significant as the p-value is less than 0.05. Another way to understand the relationship between QWL and job involvement. The simple linear regression analysis is done to understand the dependence on the factors of Quality of work life in table 1.3.

Proposed linear regression  model for the employee job involvement is as follows;

INVOL=0.109+0.258 TRAIN+ 0.099 EMPR+0.165 RELAT+0.268 SCURE+0.105 FLEX+0.102 REWD

A significant relationship is found between employee job involvement and constructs of quality of work Life. Working Environment and Organizational Culture (W.ENV) and Adequacy of Resources and Facilities (A.R.F) are excluded from the model for employees’ job involvement due to insignificant behaviour for employees’ job involvement. 

The table 1.4 is showing the standard error of estimates and value of R-square (Coefficient of Determination) is 0.783 which indicates that 78.3% variation exists in the model for the employee job involvement explained by the linear relationship of the constructs of Quality of Work Life.  

Figure 1.2 shows the ultimate effect of QWL on the employees job retention and indirectly there is also impact of QWL on job retention through the mediating effect of Jon involvement . In short, it can be said that the QWL has direct and indirect impact on the employees job retention. QWL is considered as the best managerial tool in the organization to get employees job involvement, satisfaction and commitment. This job involvement, job satisfaction and job commitment plots a base for a high level of employee retention.   

Conclusion

In high-tech organizations, IT experts are a strategic asset of the organization. Software houses of Pakistan desire to retain the human capital at every primary level for the timely completion of projects and maintaining the performance in the long run. But retention of human capital is the challenge for the software houses. Quality of work life contains working environment and organizational culture, rewards and compensation, job security, empowerment, adequate resources and facilities, relation and cooperation, training and development and flexible working hours. Quality of work life works as a tool for the organization to improve the facilities for the human capital to involve them more in their job. In short, quality of work life works as a catalyst to improve job involvement. More job involvement leads to a better level of employee retention. So quality of work life may have a direct and indirect relationship with job retention. Good strategies, planning and execution is needed to cover the communication gap for the effective quality of work life implementation.

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