Reorienting HRM for Value: Highlighting the

Contributions of HR Practices and Research

in the Time of Crisis

Nikodemus Hans Setiadi Wijaya, Ph.D

An idea presented at the 9th National Conference on Applied

Business (NCAB-9)
Saturday, 27 March 2021
 A Reflection
1. From the organizational
perspective, are human resources
(HR) important? If “Yes,” How?
2. As a strategic partner, will HRM
make a difference in business
performance?
3. Will HR practices contribute to the
organizational ability to adapt better
with the challenging/changing
environment and to pursue
corporate sustainability?
4. How can HR Research make
significant contributions to HR
Practices and HRM effectiveness?
Framework of this Presentation
The Forcing Factors
New normal is a current situation, social custom,
etc., that is different from what has been experienced
or done before but is expected to become usual
(https://www.dictionary.com), i.e., as an adaptive
change.
– Crisis due to Covid-19 pandemic
– Hard challenge, extremely difficult situation
– Flexible workforce
– Digitalization
Directions for HR
Practices
 Consequences of Forcing Factors
No. Factor Consequences
Crisis due to Covid-19
1
pandemic • Endeavor to survive
Hard challenge, • Unpredictability
2 extremely difficult • Financial difficulty/instability
situation
• Temporary workers
3 Flexible workforce • Fully working at office, WFH, or mixed
• Work-family boundaries have blurred
Adaptability of senior and non-engineering
4 Digitalization
background employees to new technologies
 Main Issues Related to HR
1. Work-life balance
Work-life balance → the happiness index, life
satisfaction

2. Stressors
Work demand versus non-work demand

3. Safety and security

Unsafe against pandemic and unsecure with the jobs
 Work-Life Balance
Work/Life Elements Before WFH WFH

1. Time for him/herself A truly luxury thing An easy thing to acquire,

or meeting with family abundantly provided
I lost my community at work
2. Employee’s attitude My big dream in the Euphoria, the normal, and
about staying at home life finally “I think it is too much”

3. Employee’s I don’t have a big (+) I can manage myself now,

perception about task enough job autonomy I will use my full capacity
responsibilities without too many rules
(-) I can spend my time as I
wish
 Work-Life Balance
Work/Life Elements Before WFH WFH

4. Employer’s/manager’s We can easily control We lose the control on most

perception about most employees’ employees’ activities
employees activities
1. It is likely that life satisfaction might not be higher
although employees in the WFH setting. It might be
similar with the happiness index!
2. In such situation, employee or employer, who may have
a higher possibility to violate the psychological
contract? Organizations need tools to ensure WFH will
not hurt organizational performance and goals.
 Stressors
New stressors:
1. New roles
• Help children studying at home
• Parents work at office, but their children study at home
• Home matters
2. Conflict with spouse and children
3. Senior or some other groups of employees may have
problems in adapting with new technologies or ways to
do their tasks (suddenly implemented)
4. Others: pandemic itself, lack of mobility, financial
problem, sense of security, and so on.
 Ideas for HR Practices #1

Forcing
HR Practices HR Practices: Focal Responsibilities
Factors
Assessment of the current situation and its
HR planning
*Crisis due to consequences to all HR functions
Covid-19
Conducted virtually; only some elements should be
pandemic
Recruitment & conducted as usual; refining the recruitment/selection
selection *Hard challenge, methods to improve their effectiveness; candidates’
extremely personal traits may be important to assess
difficult situation
•
Employee-supervisor perspectives on how to
*Flexible measure performance
workforce • Supervising on the goal/result of tasks, i.e.,
Performance
when & how to do is less assessed
management *Digitalization
• If the 360-degree evaluation method is not
possible (i.e., costly), a two-rater method can
be applied
Red marks → ones most suggested to HR Managers to focus
 Ideas for HR Practices #1

HR Practices Forcing Factors HR Practices: Focal Responsibilities

• Emphasizing internship
*Crisis due to
• Close employee-supervisor daily interaction
Covid-19
pandemic • Improving skills to promote job sharing
Learning &
among employees
development *Hard challenge, • Self-management skill training
extremely difficult
situation • Trainings related to business digitalization
• Self-directed knowledge seeking
*Flexible
Providing job security and horizontal movement
workforce
(rather than a promise of moving upward);
Career planning *Digitalization opportunity for learning wider things to cope with
more complex work situation (more subjective
career success rather than objective one)
 Ideas for HR Practices #2

Forcing
HR Practices HR Practices: Focal Responsibilities
Factors
Any methods, for example, ranking method,
classification method can be good as it can strongly
Job evaluation
link the jobs and their contributions to the
*Crisis due to organization
Covid-19
pandemic • Mutual FAIRNESS (to the employee,
Rewards among employees, and to employer)
*Hard • Based on unit/organizational performance
challenge,
extremely Deeper communication between company and labor
Industrial relations difficult union to cope with the current situation, i.e., survival
situation and success
*Flexible • Very mandatory, when most tasks done
workforce virtually
Employee • Employees’ participation and the
*Digitalization
participation and communication with their supervisors
communication related to the task goals are a must
• AVAILABILITY within work hours (during
WFH)
 Ideas for HR Practices #2

HR Practices Forcing Factors HR Practices: Focal Responsibilities

*Crisis due to • Implementing safe work procedure

Covid-19
(tighter working health and safe
Health and safety pandemic
regulation)
*Hard challenge, • Reschedule/reorientation business travel
extremely difficult
situation • Face-to-face/virtual employee counseling
Personal service
*Flexible • Supervisory/co-worker and spouse/family
wellbeing workforce
support
Administrative *Digitalization Adopting HRIS as possible to promote HR
responsibilities information
 How about the HR Practices “Fit” issue?
The FIT should be
pursued by 1. Performance management
emphasizing on the 2. Learning and development
most important 3. Rewards
practices! 4. Employee participation and
communication
5. Health and safety
6. Personal wellbeing
A higher effectiveness of
managing people by
strengthening factors as
follows:
1. Roles of leadership
and intermediate
supervisors →
maintaining morale
2. Corporate culture →
strengthen the
mutual psychological
contract
Micro Looks: Several Concerns to Support
Organizational Effectiveness
1. For millennial employees: an employment contract may be
necessary, make targets, exploring their fresh ideas.
2. More diverse teams: i.e., millennials with their freshness and seniors
with their prudence, cross-cultural teams if possible. To adjust with
new technologies, millennial employees can assist seniors.
3. Managers should avoid pointless work (undermined self-efficacy)
and unsupported work (technically, socially) which may raise
frustration.
4. Organizations are encouraged to arrange new job design with
regulation, SOP to respond to entirely remotely (WFH), partly
remotely (mixed), or “at office” work settings and flexible work hours.
5. Green HRM (GHRM) may be applied in organizational level, i.e.,
energy efficiency.
 Outcomes of Effective HR Practices
For employees, for example:
1. Low distress level
2. Feeling of connectedness
3. Better work-life balance
4. Wellbeing, life satisfaction, decreased illness reports
(Wellbeing is the level to which how someone feels about various aspects of their life – their home life, their
health, their relationships with others, their job and other activities. It’s about whether they feel well and happy.)
For teams and organizations, for examples:
1. Team liveliness
2. Team/Organizational creativity and innovation
3. Organizational resilience
For both:
Employee-employer balanced right/obligation
(based on the psychological contract perspective)
Directions for
HR Research
 HRM Research Issues
The Practitioner-Academic Gap:
The difference of what practitioners wanted and
of what HRM researchers did (or reported).
HRM research process has resulted findings that lack of
RATIONAL/UNDERSTANDING about they can be implemented in a
real condition,
For example, most researchers have suggested the importance of personal traits in
selection, but HR practitioners have believed that they had to emphasize on the job
description, candidate skills, and behaviors.
 How to Bridge the Gap?
For Researchers:
1. Academic researchers can collaborate with non-academic
researchers (HR practitioners)
2. Researchers should publish more “business writing”
For Companies:
3. (Big) companies can recruit PhDs to conduct research in
such area
For HR Journals:
4. HR journals can employ HR practitioners as editorial
board members
Any Practitioner Editorial Members in the Top HR Journals?
Interesting Future HR Topics

The researches which relate to the meanings of:

1. “Close relationship,” Most Eastern Cultures
articulate and appreciate the meaning of such
relationship.
2. Personal attributes to cope with the current
condition.
 Theories to Frame
Theory Short Description
Social-exchange Social exchange theory
theory (opposed to economic
exchange theory) describes
when a relationship is far
beyond the economic forms of
reciprocal exchanges, and
long-term scope of
relationship.
Social penetration Social penetration theory
theory suggests that when an
intimate relationship is
developed, a person
(employee) will be motivated
to perform his/her physical,
verbal, and emotional
expression.
Outcome Variables
The relations HR Practices with
• Happiness level
• Life satisfaction
• Affective commitment
• Employee/manager resilience,
hardiness
• Stress coping ability
• Emotional exhaustion
• Employee dignity
• Engagement
• Voice behavior
• Self-expression
 Theories Used
Theory Short Description Outcome Variables

Psychological Psychological contact HR practices or manager

Contract theory represents the mutual beliefs, behaviors with
perceptions and informal • Reluctance/hesitancy
obligations between an (Bahasa Jawa: Pekewuh)
employer and an employee. • Positive/negative emotions,
i.e., a feeling of violated
Self-regulation Self-regulation theory
theory suggests that there is a
Current work situation/pressure
process of anchoring and
with:
adjusting work performance,
• Resilience
both mental and physical in
• Stress coping ability
nature, in response to social
• Sense of urgency
and physical environment
• Creativity
(including unfavorable
circumstances).
 Data Collection Methods
1. Using a triangulation technique: multiple
sources of information, a wider perspective
2. In-depth interview for discovering hidden
information, semi-structured interview, or
focus group discussion (FGD)
3. Employing eligible informants (expert in
the field)
Redefining Organizational Performance as
Dependent Variable
HRM researches can investigate the expanded
organizational performance measures such as:
• Organizational innovation performance
• Organizational agility/adaptation
• Organizational learning capacity
• Organizational resilience
• Organizational humanity (CSR)

As the soul of organizations, how could human resources contribute

to the mentioned factors?
 A Closing Statement: HRM for VALUE
1. Today’s crisis might endanger most organizations in short-
run, but it might not in long-run for those which can
manage their human resources to become creative,
agile, resilient persons, i.e., those which can handle this
environment.
2. HR research should maintain the closeness with
practices by considering some methods and research
areas to develop the HRM theoretical figure and the
usefulness of the findings, i.e., it may produce both
academic and practical impacts.
 A Wonderful Quote to Contemplate
"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is
the key to success. If you love what you are
doing, you will be successful."
-Albert Schweitzer-

Thus, the paramount goal of HRM should promote the happiness

level of employees and employers. The higher happiness level
could promote organizational success, because the employees
can work happily and be more productive and the organization can
hold its liveliness!
 List of References
1. Branicki, L., Steyer, V., Sullivan-Taylor, B. (2016). Why resilience managers
aren’t resilient, and what human resource management can do about it. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 30:8, 1261-1286.
2. Caligiuri, P., De Cieri, H., Minbaeva, D., Verbeke, A., & Zimmermann, A. (2020).
International HRM insights for navigating the Covid-19 Pandemic: Implications
for future research and practice. Journal of International Business Studies, 51,
697-713.
3. Gigauri, I. (2020). Effect of Covid-19 on human resource management from the
perspective of digitalization and work-life balance. International Journal of
Innovative Technologies in Economics, 4(31), 1-10.
 List of References
4. Kataula, S., Gillani, A., & Budhwar, P. S. (2020). An analysis of employment
relationships in Asia using psychological contract theory: A review and research
agenda, 10(4), Human Resource Management Review, 1-22.
5. Lawder III, E. E. & Benson, G. S. (2020). The practitioner-academic gap: A view
from the middle. Human Resource Management Review, in press.
6. Minbaeva, D. (2020). Disrupted HR? Human Resource Management Review, in
press.
7. Rynes, Sara L. Giluk, Tamara L., Brown, K. G. (2014). The very separate of
academic and practitioner periodicals in Human Resource Management:
Implications for evidence-based management. The Academy of Management
Journal, 50(5), 987-1008.
Thank you for your warm
attention!

Nikodemus Hans Setiadi Wijaya, Ph.D

E-mail: niko.wijaya@gmail.com; niko.wijaya@stieykpn.ac.id