The interplay among employee resilience,sustainable HRM and work engagement

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Given the unpredictable and turbulent times, the concept of employee resilience is gaining increased recognition within numerous organisations, as resilient employees excel in adapting to continually altering situations and recovering more quickly. Additionally, they demonstrate higher work engagement. Since employee resilience, as a personal resource, can be developed, the question is about the ways through which it can be enhanced. Similarly, when arguing that engaged employees are able to perform better, the next question pertains to the antecedents of work engagement. The previous literature provided support that human resource management (HRM) plays an important role in fostering employee resilience and work engagement. However, the dimension of sustainability in people management has been somehow neglected. The paper tries to close the gap and, drawing on the JD-R model, explores the relationship among three constructs.

OBJECTIVE:

The aim of the paper is to reveal the interplay among sustainable HRM, employee resilience and work engagement.

METHODS:

Quantitative study. The data were collected using a survey.

RESULTS:

The core results revealed a positive link between sustainable HRM and work engagement. Additionally, employee resilience serves as a mediator.

CONCLUSIONS:

As an underlying mechanism, employee resilience influences the relationship between HRM practices and work engagement.

Keywords

Employee resilience work engagement sustainable HRM resilience employee well-being

Prof. Nada Trunk Širca, Ph.D. has a PhD in social science from the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Currently, she is working as a researcher, teacher, and advisor to management at three HEIs in Slovenia: the University of Primorska http://www.fm-kp.si/en, ISSBS https://mfdps.si/en/ and EMUNI https://emuni.si/. Her expertise is management in higher education, research methodology and academic writing skills, and quality in tertiary education, the recognition of knowledge, lifelong learning, online learning and EU policies in education, social inclusion. She has international experience in managing international projects, leading international conferences, and international journals.

Zahid Riaz obtained his PhD and MPhil from the UNSW Business School UNSW, Australia. He has more than 20 years of research, teaching and corporate experience in national and international settings. Before joining the Lahore School of Economics, he was a faculty member at UNSW, Australia, Coventry University, United Kingdom and Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. Also, he served as visiting research fellow at the UNSW Business School, UNSW, Australia. He published 18 research papers in international journals of high repute and impact. His areas of teaching and research interests are Strategic Management, International Business and Organizational Behavior.

Samreen Hamid, is a doctoral candidate at FAST NUCES, Pakistan. Her doctoral research endeavours concentrate on the intersection of social responsibility and finance. Her research interests include Management, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Governance and Organizational Behaviour. Her teaching interests are related to Sustainable Business, Organization and Management, Financial Institutions, and Accounting.

Greta Žurauskė is a Human Resources specialist specializing in Employee Participation and Communication, Well-being, Learning and Development. Kaunas Technology University alumni in the field of Human Resources Management. Areas of interest –Leadership Development, Career Planing, Corporate Sustainability and Health and Safety.

Živilė Stankevičiutė, PhD in Management, is professor at Sustainable Management research group, School of Economics and Business, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania. Her doctoral dissertation on Sustainable Human Resource Management has been recognised internationally: she got Baltic University Programme Annual Award for the Best PhD defended in 2015. Her research interests are: Sustainable Human Resource Management, Employee Wellbeing, Digital Transformations, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Development. She is a member of National Expert Council for sustainable development goals at Lithuanian Responsible Business Association (LAVA) dealing with SDG8. She has expertise in the field of partnership with business while conducting research projects and providing the practical implications based on research quantitative and qualitative data. In 2019 and 2020, she got Kaunas University of Technology Award as a Most Active Young Researcher. In 2022 and 2023, she was awarded for her outstanding contribution to the development of junior researchers.

1 Introduction

More than before, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are mentioned as key characteristics of the business environment [1, 2]. Natural disasters, geopolitical threats, technological advances, changing demographics, economic crises, and epidemics of infectious diseases [3 –5] have been recently among the top challenges the organisations must respond to in order to remain viable. While doing this, the central role lies with the employees who are the key stakeholders in sustaining the longevity of the business [6]. Their attitudes and behaviours, including openness to organisational change, contribute to the organisations’ ability to be agile [7]. However, the above mentioned challenges are not only organisational; they also affect the employees directly and jeopardise their well-being [5 , 9]. As such, employees find themselves in a somewhat dual situation, where on the one hand, they are expected to contribute to organisation’s success and survival under dynamic and uncertain conditions; and on the other hand, they need to take care of their own resources, in terms of work-life balance, mental health, etc. Given such complexity, not all employees are equally successful as their capacity to bear up against and adapt to significant challenges, that is, their resilience, differs [10].

In literature, resilience has been acknowledged as a key characteristic of a successful employee in a modern working environment [11]. Moreover, the prevailing approach argues that when changes become the new normal, resilience turns into an essential skill for doing well at work [12]. Finally, in 2020, the World Economic Forum announced resilience as one of the newly emerging skills for tomorrow [13]. Acknowledging the plurality of approaches [14, 15], the concept of resilient employee usually implies a key capability enabling employees to manage, adapt and flourish at work under continually changing circumstances [10]. This line of research suggests that employee resilience can be developed [16] and proposes a number of measures to enhance it, including servant leadership [9], organisational learning [17], event communication [18], and authentic leadership [19]. Among other powerful measures, human resource management (HRM) practices have been also introduced [5 , 20–23] arguing that HRM intervention has a crucial role in proactive management of employee resilience [20]. However, while investigating the role of HRM practices, few studies focused on sustainable HRM [24, 25], which links the notions of corporate sustainability with HRM practices [26, 27]. This is despite the fact that sustainable HRM represents a new approach to managing people, recognising the complexity of relations at the workplaces and the need to avoid the negative impact of HRM on employees and their families [28]. The current paper aims to narrow the gap by testing the relationship between sustainable HRM and employee resilience.

Going further, work engagement describing it as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind” [29] is seen as a significant factor contributing to organisational success [20]. Research suggests that engaged employees are highly energetic and enthusiastic about their work, and view themselves as able to handle the work-related challenges [24]. Given the importance of engagement, there is a question how to foster it. Responding to the calls in previous literature and relatively little research devoted to the way organisations employ HRM [30] or resilience [20] in fostering work engagement, the current paper explores the direct relations between sustainable HRM and work engagement and between employee resilience and work engagement.

Finally, previous studies in the management field underline that the linkage between the two constructs might not be of direct nature only [31]. The scholars encourage the researchers to study and clarify the mechanism through which one construct affects another [32], exploring the potential for mediating or moderating processes. This paper responds to the mentioned call arguing that employee resilience plays a mediating role in the relationship between sustainable HRM and work engagement. The argumentation of such a claim lies in the JD-R model [29]. Following this model, personal resources (employee resilience) may mediate the relationship between job resources (sustainable HRM) and outcomes (work engagement).

The aim of this paper is to reveal the interplay among employee resilience, sustainable HRM, and work engagement.

The paper bridges the research gap through the implementation of a quantitative study. The data was collected using a survey.

The paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it extends the current literature on employee resilience and its implication for organisations by exploring the way it contributes to work engagement. Second, drawing upon the JD-R model, the paper demonstrates that sustainable HRM can be used as a job resource to positively affect the employee resilience and subsequently work engagement. Third, the paper contributes to the opening of a “black box” in the relationship between HRM and performance [33] while revealing employee resilience as an important mediator in the sustainable HRM-work engagement nexus. Finally, the paper proposes sustainable HRM as the extension of strategic HRM [34] operationalising it as a HRM practice, which reflects the principles of sustainability.

The paper is organised as follows. The next section describes sustainable HRM, employee resilience, and work engagement. Then, the hypotheses are formulated based on the related literature and JD-R model. Further, the methodology is presented, followed by the results. After discussing the results, the final section offers a discussion, including practical implications, limitations, and future research suggestions.

2 Theoretical background

2.1 Employee resilience

The term “resilience” finds its origin in the Latin verb resilire and is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “being able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions” [35].Being an interdisciplinary concept, resilience has received substantial attention in many fields, including psychology and organisation management [36, 37]. Recently, employee resilience has gained a lot of attention in HRM literature as a result of the impact that crises have on business and employees themselves [5]. However, it seems that companies still have a lot to do in this field, as Aon reported that just 30 percent of employees are resilient [38]. More recently, a global survey has revealed that only 47% of senior executives believed that their employees were “highly resilient” [39].

Fully agreeing that employee resilience can lead to positive personal and organisational outcomes [12], scholars offer various definitions of the construct [15]. For instance, Luthans (2002, p.702) argues that employee resilience is “capacity to rebound, to ‘bounce back’ from adversity, uncertainty, conflict, failure or even positive change, progress and increased responsibility” [40]. According to Kuntz et al. (2016, p.460), employee resilience implies “capacity of employees to utilize resources to continually adapt and flourish at work, even when faced with challenging circumstances” [41]. Meanwhile, Hartmann et al. [14] define employee resilience as a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity [14].

Literature review allows stating that current definitions of employee resilience involve three orientations: trait, capacity, and process [14]. From the trait perspective, employee resilience is conceptualised as a discrete and stable personal characteristic or a bundle of different personal strengths [14]. The capacity orientation posits that resilience encompasses a range of abilities displayed by employees when confronted with adverse situations, including adaptability and recovery [16]. Finally, a process-oriented approach regards resilience as a progression that emerges in response to adversity and results in the demonstration of positive adaptation [14]. Still, despite different orientations, resilience is mainly conceptualised as a response in circumstances where an individual: 1) has been exposed to a subjectively significant threat, risk, harm, diversity; 2) adapts positively; 3) does not lose normal functioning; 4) shows positive growth [14 , 22].

The current paper perceives employee resilience as a behavioural capability, which reflects resource utilisation and the ability to continually adapt at work [16]. Employee resilience refers to a suite of adaptive, learning, ant networking behaviours [41]. Employee resilience covers proactive, adaptive, learning, support-seeking, and crisis management behaviours that can be both continually evolved and implemented in daily work environment [16]. Behaving in a resilient manner reflects an individual ability to overcome the obstacles and seek out opportunities for ongoing improvement [10].

2.2 Sustainable HRM

HRM is a domain which undergoes constant evolution and change [42]. One such example refers to the emergence of a new construct, namely sustainable HRM [28 , 43–48], which links the concept of sustainable development with HRM. During the last couple of decades, numerous companies worldwide have dedicated themselves to sustainability [49]. Consequently, sustainability has steadily become strategically important for HRM as the HRM function is expected to play an active role to help the organisations to meet stakeholders’ demands, which are usually competing. Moreover, HRM is expected to take care of the triple bottom lines to achieve not only financial but also environmental and social performance, for both the present and the future [50 –52].

The term Sustainable HRM first appeared more than 20 years ago with discussions in Germany, Switzerland and Australia (for literature review see [53 –55]). Thus, sustainable HRM is still an emerging research field and this explains not only the variety of conceptualisations, but also the fact that sustainable HRM is an umbrella term that covers multiple dimensions, levels, and a certain form of dynamics over the time [43 , 57].

Initially, sustainable HRM was defined as “those long-term oriented conceptual approaches and activities aimed at socially responsible and economically appropriate recruitment and selection, development, deployment, and release of employees” [58] (p. 217). This definition reflects the tradition of soft HRM [59], which is more employee- and development-oriented [60] and focused on human capital conservation [57]. Further, Mariappanadar (2003, p. 910) suggested that a “sustainable HR strategy can be defined as the management of human resources to meet the optimal needs of the company and community of the present without compromising the ability to meet the needs of the future” [61]. By this definition, it was proposed that the responsibility of business in managing people goes beyond its corporate organisational boundaries and beyond the present time frame [57]. The most influential definition of sustainable HRM was provided by Ehnert et al. (2016, p. 3) arguing that sustainable HR could be defined as “ the adoption of HRM strategies and practices that enable the achievement of financial, social and ecological goals, with an impact inside and outside of the organisation and over a long-term time horizon while controlling for unintended side effects and negative feedback” [27]. The presented definition underlines two core components of sustainable HRM: first, the recognition of multiple, potentially contradictory, social, ecological and economic goals; second, the complex interrelations between HRM systems and their environments, including internal and external, with a specific focus on relationships which allow the long-term reproduction of resources [62] and which control externalities [61].

Despite the diversity in terminology, all definitions are concerned with acknowledging either explicitly or implicitly human and social outcomes of the organisation and the impact that human resources have on the longevity and achievements of the organisation [28]. Sustainable HRM calls to reconsider and reframe the understanding of “success” and “performance” [51] going beyond economic success. Sustainable HRM implies the potential to help organisations to set up the ecosystem where employees would have: a) the intention to allocate resources to a specific organisation; b) the capability to accomplish tasks effectively; and finally c) the possibility to work without negative effect on well-being [51]. As such, sustainability in people management refers to the balance of consuming and reproducing human resources [63]. In this sense, sustainable HRM is seen as a survival strategy of the organisation [51] and a proactive approach in the employment relationship that can help the organisations to legitimate their business within society [64]. Sustainable HRM is built on strategic HRM; however, it differs from strategic HRM by six characteristics, namely: identification of tensions between desirable organisational outcomes; essential concern with capability development; need to recognise both the positive and negative outcomes of HRM activities; attention given to the development and implementation of HRM activities; explicit statement of values and ethics informing Sustainable HRM; and sustainable HRM metrics that are designed to promote organisational, economic and ecological social change [34].

Attempting to answer what characterises sustainable HRM, Ehnert [65] compiled a short list of characteristics, including: long-term orientation; impact-control orientation; substance and self-sustaining orientation; partnership-orientation; multiple-bottom lines-orientation; and paradox-orientation [65]. Based on qualitative study, Järlström et al. [60] introduced four dimensions as sustainable HRM characteristics, namely justice and equality, transparent human resource practices, profitability, and employee well-being [60]. More recently, drawing on literature from a range of works linking sustainability and HRM and following the essence of corporate sustainability, Stankevicitė and Savanevičienė [93] proposed 11 characteristics of sustainable HRM: long-term orientation, care of employees, care of environment, profitability, employee participation and social dialogue, employee development, external partnership, flexibility, compliance beyond labour regulations, employee cooperation, fairness, and equality [66]. The current paper follows the last approach while operationalising the construct of sustainable HRM.

Summing up, sustainable HRM aims at simultaneously preserving, regenerating, and developing the economic, environmental, social, and human resources of the organisation [67]. Sustainable HRM is one of organisational efforts to engage in corporate social responsibility while effectively managing people, contributing to organisation’s effectiveness and at the same time securing individual development and well-being [56].

2.3 Work engagement

Over the past two decades, the number of studies on work engagement has increased rapidly [68, 69], given its correlation with high levels of task performance, behaving in a creative manner, and organisational citizenship behaviour [70, 71]. Although work engagement was found to be the main determinant of organisational performance [4], controversy still exists regarding the conceptualisation of the construct [72]. Within the academic perspective, four major approaches define the existing state of work engagement (for the overview see Shuck, 2011) [73]. The present paper is based on the definition provided by Schaufeli et al. [29] arguing that work engagement refers to “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” [29]. Based on the provided definition, in engagement, fulfilment exists in contrast to the voids of life that leave people feeling empty, as in burnout [74]. Furthermore, engagement pertains to a lasting and widespread affective cognitive state that is not directed toward any specific individual, event, object, or behaviour [29]. Thus, work engagement is conceptualised as a three-dimensional construct. Vigour is defined by high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, willingness to invest effort in one’s work, and persistence even when faced with difficulties. Dedication is characterised by the sense of enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, significance, and challenge with respect to the work. Absorption refers to being fully concentrated and deeply engrossed in one’s work, where time passes quickly and one has difficulties with detaching oneself from work [29].

Turning to the survey data, it should underlined that Gallup’s 2023 research demonstrated that only 13% of employees across Europe said they felt engaged at work [75]. This is a red flag signalling that organisations continue to perform poorly on their employee engagement.

Summing up, engaged employees have high levels of energy, are enthusiastic about their work, and finally, they are completely immersed in their work [70].

3 Hypothesis development

In this paper, the examination of the relationship between Sustainable HRM, employee resilience and work engagement is based on the JD-R model, which argues that every job includes demands as well as resources [76, 77]. Job demands refer “to physical, social or organizational job aspects that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort and are associated with certain physiological and/or psychological costs” [78]. In contract, “job resources refer to physical, psychological, social or organizational job aspects that may: be functional in achieving work-related goals; reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs; and stimulate personal growth and development” [78]. JD-R model also includes personal resources that play a similar role as job resources in enhancing motivation [76, 79]. In this paper, employee resilience is regarded as a personal resource [76]. Additionally, drawing upon previous study [20], sustainable HRM can be thought of as a job resource. Consequently, this paper belongs to the stream of literature, where HRM is conceptualised as a job resource, thus extending the HRM theory by proposing a new mechanism (i.e. job resource) through which HRM can impact the human resource-performance chain, namely influence employee attitudes and behaviours [20].

The theoretical model is provided in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Theoretical framework.

3.1 Sustainable HRM and employee resilience

Drawing on previous literature in the HRM field, the core idea of sustainable HRM, and JD-R model, the paper argues that sustainable HRM plays a crucial role in enhancing employee resilience. As it was mentioned before, employee resilience as a developable capability requires enabling organisational context [10] and sustainable HRM can be a provider and guarantor of such environment.

Previous literature provided support that HRM enhanced employee resilience. For example, Bardoel et al. [22] proposed that the following set of HRM practices would enhance employee resilience: development of social supports at work; work–life balance practices; employee assistance programmes; employee development programmes, such as resilience training; flexible work arrangements, reward and benefits systems; occupational health and safety systems; risk and crisis management systems; and diversity management [22]. Cooke et al. [20] found a positive link between high performance work systems (HPWS) consisting of four dimensions (reward, training and development, performance appraisal, and employee participation) and employee resilience [20]. The research of Khan et al. [21] demonstrated that for HRM practices, namely job design, information sharing and flow within an organisation, employee benefits, and employee development enabled the development of employee resilience [21]. Based on meta analysis, Zhai et al. (2021) concluded that strategic HRM enriched employee resilience [23]. Finally, the study of Lu et al. [24] confirmed that sustainable HRM based on common good values had a positive effect on employee resilience [24].

Sustainable HRM is seen as a design option, which allows maintaining, renewing and restoring human resources [65]. As such, sustainable HRM provides employees with opportunities for training and building the capabilities, involves employees in participative decision-making, promotes healthy work conditions and environment, ensures diversity management and fair compensation, and ensures employee career management and future employability [28, 80]. Employee resilience can be enhanced by reducing risks (for instance, harassment or missing a career-threatening deadline on a project) and increasing personal assets (for instance, promotions, bonuses, recognition) [81]. All above-mentioned sustainable HRM practices are the potential resources to be used to foster employee resilience. Looking from the sustainable HRM perspective, organisations can reduce adverse events, for instance, by ensuring open communication in the organisation or by inviting employees to participate in problem-solving and decisions (participation as sustainable HRM practice). Further, organisations should contribute to the existing employee resources in order to increase their personal assets. This could be done, for instance, by providing training with the main focus on skillsets and capacities the employee will need in the future [82].

Thus, it can be assumed that:

H1: Sustainable HRM has a positive effect on employee resilience.

3.2 Employee resilience and work engagement

This paper proposes that employee resilience fosters work engagement. According to the JD-R model, job resources and personal resources may instigate a motivational process leading to work engagement [83]. As an internal personal resource, resilience allows the employees not only to be more adaptive and responsive to organisational changes necessary for organisational success, but also to proactively prepare for hardships and minimise the impact of stressful events on themselves [84]. It is important to mention that resilient employees possess skills or positive attributes that enable them to effectively navigate workplace adversities. These may include optimistic and energetic outlooks, as well as curiosity and openness to new experiences [85]. In addition, resilient employees typically exhibit greater emotional stability, facilitating the establishment of high-quality relationships with co-workers and mangers, and social support in the workplace [24].

Following the JD-R model, all these features of resilience contribute to work engagement [24, 85]. Recent empirical studies have also provided evidence regarding the positive link between employee resilience and employee engagement. For instance, Chen [30] investigated the role of psychological capital in managers and employees in the service sector and found that resilience was a powerful predictor of work engagement [30]. Further, Cooke et al. [20] reported a positive link between employee resilience and work engagement in case of the banking sector [20]. The same conclusion was made in several more studies [24, 85]. Thus, consistent with previous literature and based on the JD-R model, it is expected that:

H2: Employee resilience is positively related to work engagement.

3.3 Sustainable HRM and work engagement

Research into HRM and employee engagement found that some HRM practices and HRM systems were positively related to work engagement [86]. For instance, HRM practices such as personnel selection, socialisation, performance management, and training and development served as factors for nurturing work engagement [87].

Drawing upon the JD-R model, HRM practices can be perceived by the employees as a set of job resources that enhance suitable working conditions [79]. As a result of the motivational process, the availability of such job resources leads to work engagement [79]. Therefore, it is proposed that:

H3: Sustainable HRM is positively related to work engagement.

3.4 Mediating role of employee resilience in the linkage between Sustainable HRM and work engagement

According to the JD-R model, the existence of job resources may activate personal resources and this, in turn, may result in positive psychological and organisational outcomes [79]. Moreover, personal resources may function either as moderators or as mediators in the relationship between job resources and various outcomes [79]. As such, people management practices, for example, training and development, career management, etc. will help employees to secure and develop their personal resource resilience, which in turn fosters work engagement. More generally speaking, when the work environment is resourceful, the employees can achieve their well-being targets without huge efforts [24].

Turning to empirical evidence, the current research of Lu et al. [24] confirmed the mediating effect of employee resilience linking it with sustainable HRM practices based on common good values and work engagement. Therefore, it is proposed that:

H4: Employee resilience mediates a positive relationship between sustainable HRM and work engagement.

4 Methodology

4.1 Sample and data collection

For the research, data were collected using convenience sampling from employees in Lithuania. Convenience sampling is a type of non-probability sampling where members of the target population who meet certain practical criteria, such as easy accessibility, availability at a given time, geographical proximity, or the willingness to participate, are included for the purpose of the study [88].

For the survey, an online questionnaire was created. The questionnaire was distributed mainly using social media. When distributing the questionnaire, information about the survey purpose and a link to the survey were included. Data were collected in January-February, 2022. At the end of the research, 463 questionnaires were collected.

4.2 Instrument

A self-reported questionnaire with questions to be answered on a five-point Likert scale was used in the study where 1 indicated “strongly disagree” and 5 indicated “strongly agree.” All items were translated from English into the Lithuanian language using a back translation procedure [89], thus ensuring translation accuracy.

4.3 Measures

HRM practices reflecting the characteristics of sustainable HRM are treated as sustainable HRM practices. The literature on this topic highlights actions related to staffing, training, performance appraisal and career management, compensation, work-family balance and diversity promotion, and occupational health and safety [90]. The current study treats sustainable HRM as the second-order construct, including and measuring employee training, performance appraisal, compensation, career management, work-life balance, diversity management, security and safety at work, and participation. The items for measuring the above mentioned practices were used from previously studies of Diaz-Carrion et al. [90] –for employee training, compensation, career management, and diversity management; from Prieto and Pérez-Santana [91] –for performance appraisal and participation; from Lee [92] –for work-life balance, and from Staniškienė and Stankevičiciutė [93] –for security and safety at work.

Employee resilience was measured with 9 items from the work of Näswal et al. [10]. Examples of items are the following: “I approach managers when I need their support” and “I use change at work as an opportunity for growth”.

Work engagement was measured using an ultra-short measure (UWES-3, a three-item scale) developed by Schaufeli et al. [94]. The items are the following: “At my work, I feel bursting with energy” (vigour); “I am enthusiastic about my job” (dedication); and “I am immersed in my work” (absorption).

5 Results

For the purpose of analysisč SPSS (Version 25) and JASP (Version 18) were used. The tests for skewness and kurtosis were conducted for establishing normality. Data normality cannot be established if the value of skewness is greater than +3. Likewise, the acceptable range for kurtosis is +10 [95]. As per results presented in Table 1, there were no issues with normality.

Table 1
Descriptive statistics

Variables Obs Mean SD Min Max

Work engagement 463 3.58 0.808 1 5

Sustainable HRM 463 3.39 0.691 2 5

Employee resilience 463 3.93 0.622 2 5

Gender 463 1.661 0.4874 1 3

Income 463 2.004 0.7385 1 4

Tenure 463 4.549 2.0836 1 7

Variables	Obs	Mean	SD	Min	Max
Work engagement	463	3.58	0.808	1	5
Sustainable HRM	463	3.39	0.691	2	5
Employee resilience	463	3.93	0.622	2	5
Gender	463	1.661	0.4874	1	3
Income	463	2.004	0.7385	1	4
Tenure	463	4.549	2.0836	1	7

5.1 Common method variance and descriptive statistics

The common method variance (CMV) is attributed to measurement model [96]. To determine the common method bias, post hoc statistical tests, namely, Harman’s single-factor test was conducted. The results of Harman’s single-factor test illustrated that a single factor only attributed to 26.80% of the variance, which is less than the cutoff value of 50%.

Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of the dependent, independent, and demographic variables in the model. For sustainable HRM practices, the values of mean and standard deviation are M = 3.39, SD = 0.691. The values of mean and standard deviation for employee resilience are M = 3.93, SD = 0.622. For the work engagement, the mean and standard deviation values are M = 3.58, SD = 0.808. This study included employee tenure as a control variable and the mean and standard deviation values are M = 4.549, SD = 2.0836. Likewise, income level of respondents was another control variables in this study and the mean and standard deviation values are M = 2.004, SD = 0.7385.

5.2 Measurement model analysis

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed using the maximum likelihood estimation method. The measurement model was evaluated using goodness-of-fit indicators. According to Hoyle [97], goodness-of-fit indexes indicate whether or not the parameter estimates of the model can reproduce the observed relationships of variables in the sample data. Table 2 shows the fit indexes for the measurement model. In this study, the majority of the reflective indicators for work engagement, sustainable HRM, and employee resilience acquired factor loadings greater than 0.5. The items that had factor loadings less than 0.5 were excluded.

Table 2
Goodness-of-fit indexes

Index Cutoff value Model estimate

CFI ≥0.9 0.902

TLI ≥0.9 0.882

RMSEA <0.08 0.089

Index	Cutoff value	Model estimate
CFI	≥0.9	0.902
TLI	≥0.9	0.882
RMSEA	<0.08	0.089

The value of Cronbach’s alpha for all the variables were greater than 0.7, which is the threshold value for establishing internal consistency or reliability [98] (see Table 3). Moreover, it can be stated that a construct shows convergent validity, if the value average variance extracted (AVE) is more than 0.5 [99]. Thus, it can be concluded that all the constructs hold convergent validity and discriminant validity as shown in Table 3.

Table 3

Reliability and validity

	Cronbach’s alpha	Average variance extracted (AVE)
Work engagement	0.846	0.586
Sustainable HRM	0.752	0.561
Employee resilience	0.903	0.598

Table 4 provides the Pearson correlation coefficients for study variables. The results revealed significant correlations between work engagement, employee resilience, and Sustainable HRM with coefficients of 0.484 for Sustainable HRM and 0.359 for employee resilience (both P < 0.01). A robust and positive correlation was observed between Sustainable HRM and employee resilience (r = 0.624, P < 0.01). Additionally, both tenure and income suggested a significant correlation with work engagement, while income was found to be respectively negatively correlated (r = 0.220; –0.307, p < 0.01). Conversely, gender showed a low and insignificant correlation with work engagement (r = 0.079, P < 0.01).

Table 4

Pearson correlation

	Variables	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	Work engagement	–
2	Strategic HRM practices	0.484^**	–
3	Employee resilience	0.359^**	0.624^**	–
4	Tenure	0.220^**	0.012	–0.066	–
5	Income	–0.307^**	–0.208^**	–0.096^*	–0.236^**	–
6	Gender	0.079	–0.086	–0.128^**	–0.0181	–0.0801	–

^**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2 tailed). ^*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

5.3 Testing of hypotheses

Hypothesis 1 was tested and the results indicated that Sustainable HRM had a direct significant relationship with employee resilience (β= 0.538 p = 0.000) as shown in Table 5. The overall model fit for the regression was statistically significant F (3.000) = 80.3105, (p < 0.000). Furthermore, the results indicated that income and tenure had an insignificant and low impact in this relationship. Thus, Sustainable HRM practices positively affected employee resilience regardless of the employee’s duration of employment at the organisation or their satisfaction with income.

Table 5
Regression analysis

Dependent variable Dependent variable

Employee resilience Work engagement

Control variables

Income 0.014 (n.s) –0.192^*

Tenure 0.018 (n.s) 0.0706^*

Independent variable

Sustainable HRM 0.526^* 0.428^*

Employee resilience – 0.179^*

R² 0.196 0.316

F 99.759^* 53.001^***

	Dependent variable	Dependent variable
Control variables
Income	0.014 (n.s)	–0.192^***
Tenure	0.018 (n.s)	0.0706^***
Independent variable
Sustainable HRM	0.526^***	0.428^***
Employee resilience	–	0.179^***
R²	0.196	0.316
F	99.759^***	53.001^***

^***p < 0.05.

For the hypothesis 2, employee resilience had a direct significant relationship with work engagement (β= 0.178, p = 0.000) providing ample evidence to accept hypothesis 2. As per hypothesis 3, Sustainable HRM also has a direct significant relationship with work engagement (β= 0.428, p = 0.000). Hence, Sustainable HRM does have a positive effect on their employee resilience and work engagement.

To test the hypothesis H4, a mediation analysis was conducted. The results of mediation analysis are presented in Table 6, which shows the direct effect and indirect effect. Both are significant, suggesting complementary mediation with a total effect of 0.5209 at limits of lower bound (0.0261) and upper bound (0.2628). Similarly, the results of mediation analysis for hypothesis H4 as shown in Table 6 illustrate that both the direct effect and indirect effect are significant, suggesting complementary mediation.

Table 6

Mediation analysis

Relationship	Direct effects	SE	t	p-value
SHRM ⟶ Work engagement	0.5317	0.0923	5.76	0.000
	Total effects	SE	t	p-value
SHRM ⟶ Employee resilience ⟶ Work engagement	0.5209	0.0465	11.1982	0.000
	Indirect effects	BootSE	BootLLCI	BootUCLI
SHRM ⟶ Employee resilience ⟶ Work engagement	0.1326	0.1422	0.0261	0.2628

6 Discussion and conclusions

The aim of the paper was to reveal the interplay among employee resilience, sustainable HRM, and work engagement. In the light of constant and unpredictable changes, organisations should proactively develop the strengths of their employees to improve individual and organisational outcomes. Accordingly, it has become crucial for businesses to search and apply specific measures for promoting employee resilience and work engagement [85]. On a personal level, resilience can bolster an individual’s capacity to survive and prosper, whereas for employers employee resilience may contribute to sustaining productivity and retaining highly skilled staff [22]. Accordingly, engaged employees are more likely to experience positive emotions and enjoy improved health, cultivate their own resources, and contribute effectively to the success of their organisation [20]. In this paper, sustainable HRM is seen as such measure leading to more resilient and engaged employees.

6.1 Sustainable HRM and employee resilience

The present paper predicted that employee resilience was a capacity that could be developed by applying sustainable HRM practices. Generally speaking, sustainable HRM aims at contributing to the success of the organisation in a broader sense, i.e., to simultaneously preserve, regenerate, and develop the social, economic, environmental, and human resources of the organisation [67]. The construct is focused on the long-term perspective [63], with continuous control of the negative effects of HRM practices [48]. In line with the prediction, the results supported the proposed hypothesis (H1). Thus, the findings demonstrated that when organisations provided employees with training and career opportunities, conducted performance appraisals, offered competitive salaries, involved employees in decision-making, promoted security and safety at work, encouraged work-life balance, and fostered diversity [66], employee resilience increased. Such findings supported certain theoretical insights. For instance, Bardoel et al. [22] argued that work-life balance as a part of sustainable HRM might be particularly attractive in the periods of organisational change. Work-life balance practices might promote healthy relationships between family and organisation, and rapid adaptation to the shifting demands from the family or employer, providing the resources that could be used to strengthen the resilience [22]. Work-life balance enabled adaptive coping mechanisms and enhanced resilience [21]. Another example refers to employee training as it helps to deal with demanding and complex tasks thus enhancing resilience [21]. Employee health and safety systems aimed at protecting and enhancing the safety, health and welfare of employees represent yet another aspect of work-life balance practices [22]. Due to safety culture promotion and improvement of employment conditions, health and safety practice as part of sustainable HRM has the potential to contribute to employee resilience.

Going further, the findings of the current paper are consistent with some previous research in HRM field, defining and operationalising HRM as high-performance work systems [20] or crisis-induced HRM practices [5] or just analysing the bundles of HRM practices [21, 22]. From the scope of this paper, it is worth to underline that findings are in line with the results of Lu et al. [24] where sustainable HRM was based on AMO (ability-motivation-opportunity to participate) perspective.

6.2 Employee resilience and work engagement

The hypothesis regarding a positive link between employee resilience and work engagement (H2) was confirmed. Drawing upon the JD-R model, when employees possess a high level of resilience, they can preserve the existing resources and acquire additional ones. Ultimately, all the accumulated resources contribute to higher work engagement [24, 85]. The current research is in line with the previous studies, which confirmed that employee work engagement was higher when they had higher levels of personal resources, including resilience. [20 , 70].

6.3 Sustainable HRM and work engagement

As it was predicted (H3), the study confirmed that sustainable HRM was positively related to work engagement. In this respect, the results obtained were not surprising due to the nature of sustainable HRM. Thus, promotion of diversity and flexibility at work, avoidance of discrimination in remuneration, or fostering healthy working environment lead to higher levels of energy, enthusiasm and passion at work [70].

6.4 Employee resilience as the mediator

The fourth hypothesis (H4) was supported, suggesting that the relationship between sustainable HRM and work engagement was mediated by resilience. It was confirmed that, consistent with the JD-R model, sustainable HRM supported the development of positive individual psychological resources, namely resilience, which, in turn, affected work engagement [76, 83]. Such findings are in line with previous studies in the field of the HRM-work engagement nexus [20, 24].

6.5 Practical implications

The study has several practical implications, which are related to two notions. First, resilient employees show a positive and powerful reaction to adversity [12] and, second, engaged employees are more likely to invent new solutions when faced with problems at work [100]. As it was mentioned before, scholars suggest that employee resilience is a phenomenon that can be nurtured in the majority of people [40]. However, employee resilience enhancement is not a short-term task [23]. This notwithstanding, applying sustainable HRM can be the right way to help employees build a set of adaptive, learning and networking behaviours [16]. This can be done by offering various initiatives that reflect sustainability principles in HRM, for instance, strengthening work-life balance culture or promoting employee participation in the decision-making. Going further, training and development programmes might increase the level of skills and this in turn could booster self-confidence of employees leading to better reactions while coping with adversity at work. Here, a practical example could be provided. For instance, the company has decided to implement some technological innovations. Such changes at work are usually challenging and create adverse situations in the workplace. In this case, Sustainable HRM practices, such as courses for employees and training sessions on how to implement technologies, might serve as a means to cope with adversity and become more resilient.

Similarly, work engagement can be promoted by imbuing a more human-centred approach to HRM, which, in turn, strengthens the employee resilience. Additionally, clear and communicated career paths can serve as a factor for higher engagement in the organisation. When it comes to engaged employees, organizations can benefit significantly. For instance, engaged employees are willing to gain new competencies. As such, the learning culture in the organization starts to be nurturing, leading to a more productive workplace. This is a significant advantage for companies, including SMS, in gaining and sustaining a competitive edge.

6.6 Research limitations and future avenues

The study contains a number of limitations. First, the paper does not include any performance measures. Further studies mapping the relationships between sustainable HRM and employee resilience, and work engagement might include employee and organisational performance, using objective performance measures (quality and/or quantity indicators) that consider the perspectives of various organisational stakeholders. Second, the paper treats employees as a homogenous group. Future studies might investigate possible education, gender, experience or age differences, as moderators in the employee resilience level. Finally, as this paper focused on a single country, the extent to which the findings may be generalisable in other national contexts is unclear. Future research might deal with multi-sector, multi-position on a company level and multi-country comparative analysis in order to discover the sustainable HRM-work engagement nexus.

Summing up, individuals and organisations may benefit from resilience and work engagement to the extent it helps them handle the challenges, such as stakeholder pressure, globalisation, and competition. Sustainable HRM can contribute to a higher level of employee resilience and work engagement.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This section should contain all acknowledgments, including any funding source to the research.

Author contributions

CONCEPTION: Živilė Stankevičitė.

METHODOLOGY: Živilė Stankevičiute.

DATA COLLECTION: Greta Žurauskė.

INTERPRETATION OR ANALYSIS OF DATA: Zahid Riaz, Samreen Hamid.

PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT: Nada Trunk Širca, Samreen Hamid, Zahid Riaz, Živilė Stankevičiutė.

REVISION FOR IMPORTANT INTELLECTUAL CONTENT: Nada Trunk Širca, Zahid Riaz, Živilė Stankevičiutė.

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The interplay among employee resilience,sustainable HRM and work engagement

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

OBJECTIVE:

METHODS:

RESULTS:

CONCLUSIONS:

Keywords

1 Introduction

2 Theoretical background

2.1 Employee resilience

2.2 Sustainable HRM

2.3 Work engagement

3 Hypothesis development

3.2 Employee resilience and work engagement

3.3 Sustainable HRM and work engagement

3.4 Mediating role of employee resilience in the linkage between Sustainable HRM and work engagement

4 Methodology

4.1 Sample and data collection

4.2 Instrument

4.3 Measures

5 Results

Table 1 Descriptive statistics Variables Obs Mean SD Min Max Work engagement 463 3.58 0.808 1 5 Sustainable HRM 463 3.39 0.691 2 5 Employee resilience 463 3.93 0.622 2 5 Gender 463 1.661 0.4874 1 3 Income 463 2.004 0.7385 1 4 Tenure 463 4.549 2.0836 1 7

5.2 Measurement model analysis

Table 2 Goodness-of-fit indexes Index Cutoff value Model estimate CFI ≥0.9 0.902 TLI ≥0.9 0.882 RMSEA <0.08 0.089

6.1 Sustainable HRM and employee resilience

6.2 Employee resilience and work engagement

6.3 Sustainable HRM and work engagement

6.4 Employee resilience as the mediator

6.5 Practical implications

6.6 Research limitations and future avenues

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Author contributions

References

Table 1
Descriptive statistics

Variables Obs Mean SD Min Max

Work engagement 463 3.58 0.808 1 5

Sustainable HRM 463 3.39 0.691 2 5

Employee resilience 463 3.93 0.622 2 5

Gender 463 1.661 0.4874 1 3

Income 463 2.004 0.7385 1 4

Tenure 463 4.549 2.0836 1 7

Table 2
Goodness-of-fit indexes

Index Cutoff value Model estimate

CFI ≥0.9 0.902

TLI ≥0.9 0.882

RMSEA <0.08 0.089