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This paper explores the experiences of non-English-speaking background (NESB) skilled employees working in Australian workplaces, their perceptions of managers' actions and how a lack of employee involvement and participation (EIP) practices and performance appraisal (PA) is perceived regarding career progression.

This exploratory research project is based on 26 semi-structured interviews with skilled migrant NESB employees based in Australia. Social exchange theory (SET) and labour market segmentation theory (LMST) are applied to help explain macro- and micro-level influences on NESB employees and their relationships with their line managers and the workforce.

Participants perceived line managers to be highly communicative and approachable; however, they indicated how a lack of EIP in decision-making and in their PA affected career progression opportunities for NESB employees. While they were satisfied overall with their jobs, the research indicated a need for improved practices and support from the broader organisation in these two identified areas.

There is relatively little research on how the challenges of an increasingly diverse workforce are managed, particularly from NESB employees' perspective. Therefore, this research fills a gap concerning NESB employees' experience in Australian organisations.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between various frontline management (FLM) styles, human resource management system (HRM) system strength and employees' helping behaviours as a form of organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). The research also examines the moderating role of workgroup loyalty in the association between HRM system strength and employees' helping behaviours.

The research uses survey data collected from 315 government workers in Malaysia. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed to test the hypothesised relationships.

Two FLM styles, “policy enactor” and “employee coach,” positively predict employees' helping behaviour. However, the “organisational leader” FLM style did not significantly lead to employees' helping behaviour. HRM system strength significantly mediates the relationship between the three FLM styles and employee helping behaviours. Finally, workgroup loyalty significantly moderates the relationship between HRM system strength and employees’ helping behaviours as OCB.

With a wealth of literature demonstrating the importance of FLMs in the implementation of HRM and a growing body of literature demonstrating the robust nature of the “system strength” argument, human resource (HR) practitioners are increasingly able to focus their attention on the way the system and FLMs contribute to employee outcomes and organisational performance. Our results indicate that HRM system strength does indeed enhance the impact of FLM styles on employee helping behaviours.

The originality of this paper is that it acknowledges and empirically examines the heterogenous nature of FLM styles, through signalling theory in enacting HRM policies and links the growing FLM literature to the HRM system strength research. These concepts have also been tested for the first time in a Malaysian context.

The implementation of performance management is the responsibility of managers; more importantly, a key part of a frontline manager's role is ensuring that frontline employees are performing by meeting organisational goals. Existing research has shown a lack of focus on the role of frontline managers in the implementation of performance management systems despite plenty of research on the separate topics of frontline managers and performance management. This article aims to understand how frontline managers connect the intended performance management system, through components and processes developed by the human resources department and higher levels of management, with their employees' performance.

This study used a qualitative method, conducting semi-structured interviews with 57 participants from two Singapore public sector organisations to understand the interaction between the formal and informal performance management systems.

The authors found that frontline managers used the formal and informal performance management systems in the organisation to manage the demands of their role. Notably, the expectations that superiors and subordinates have heavily influences how the frontline managers choose to implement their performance management responsibilities.

The article uses systems theory to illustrate and explain the complex and dynamic nature of PM in practice through the FLM's implementation of the formal and informal PM systems. The primary contribution of the study is through demonstrating under what situations do frontline managers use the formal and informal performance systems in a complementary manner within the constraints placed on them.

Existing research has ignored the perspectives of frontline managers (FLMs) in relation to the support they receive. This study aims to understand the extent to which and how other organisational actors support FLMs in their implementation of performance.

This article used a qualitative method (57 semi-structured interviews) in two Singapore public sector organisations to understand the types of support provided to FLMs. The interviewees came from various levels and the hierarchical sampling frame allowed for comparisons to be made across the cases.

The authors found that the HR department, superiors and peers signalled to FLMs the custom and practice of performance management (PM) that led to the FLMs not prioritising their PM responsibilities. Notably, the focus of the FLMs was on meeting operational needs rather than the PM process.

The authors add to the literature by examining the how the support from other organisational actors signalled to FLMs the importance of PM within their work group. This paper also explores how FLMs seek support and the type of support they want in their role.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of HRM philosophy for HPWS formulation and implementation, as well as to investigate its role to improve employee perceptions of HPWS.

A qualitative study of 55 interviews was conducted with managers (senior, HR, frontline) and employees from three telecommunication organisations based in Pakistan.

The findings indicate that a clear, well-developed HRM philosophy ensures clarity in HPWS formulation not only for managers, but also for employees. However, lack of strong philosophical foundations for HPWS can result into distorted HRM messages and negative employee perceptions.

Whilst there remains debate over the positive and negative influence of HPWS for employee outcomes, this study presents HRM philosophy as important HRM component to understand HPWS implementation. The article highlights the fact that the purpose of HPWS practices and its effective communication to employees can make a substantial difference in how employees perceive these practices. In sum, an employee centred philosophy is likely to be pre-condition circumstances for improving employee outcomes.

Exposure to high-trauma work has been associated with negative outcomes for individuals and organisations. Support for these employees can buffer and protect against mental health problems. Frontline managers (FLMs) are well placed to provide for employee support needs but are often not effective in doing so. The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand barriers to provision of four different types of social support as identified by House (1981) by FLMs to employees in a high-trauma workplace.

This qualitative study investigates three Australian ambulance service organisations, including 72 interviews.

Nine barriers to support are identified that can obstruct the provision of optimum employee support. These relate to the FLM themselves, the workplace context and employee-centric factors.

This paper is a single industry case study; further complexity may exist in other high-trauma industries. Future research should consult policy makers to develop strategies to address the barriers to FLM support.

FLMs are critical support persons as they are well placed to provide many employee support needs. Emotional support is the foundation for facilitating all other types of support to employees but results here indicate it is often lacking for workers in high-trauma workplaces for a range of individual and organisational barriers that operate in isolation and combined.

This paper juxtaposes House’s (1981) support framework with study findings to provide a model of the barriers to optimal employee support. This model contributes to a reconceptualisation of the relationship between employee and direct manager that is particularly pertinent for high-trauma contexts.

This study aims to explore the intention to quit and its associations among ambulance personnel and to compare the intention to quit and its associations between paramedic and non-paramedic staff.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 492 Australian ambulance personnel. Participants were selected by stratified random sampling. Data were collected using phone interview-administered questionnaires. Descriptive analyses, bivariate associations and structural equation modelling were performed for data analysis.

The study found that 70% of ambulance personnel intended to quit their jobs. Intention to quit was similar between paramedics and non-paramedic staff. In both staff groups, supervisors' and colleagues' support was associated with mental health symptoms; job satisfaction was associated with the intention to quit. Supervisors' and colleagues' support was indirectly associated with the intention to quit via increasing job satisfaction and reducing the experience of mental health symptoms among paramedics only. Mental health symptoms were directly associated with the intention to quit and indirectly associated with the intention to quit via reducing job satisfaction among paramedics only.

The study findings provide evidence for resource allocation in human resource management. The findings suggest that interventions to increase job satisfaction may reduce the intention to quit for all ambulance personnel. Interventions to improve supervisors' and colleagues' support and to manage depression, anxiety and stress symptoms may help to reduce the intention to quit for paramedics only.

This is the first study to model and compare the direct and indirect associations of intention to quit between paramedics and non-paramedic staff in ambulance personnel.

The well-being of employees in distributed work has never been of more importance. This study aims to investigate the factors that empower or undermine the connectivity agency of teleworkers. Connectivity agency is an important form of autonomy for managing work–home boundaries, recuperation from work and psychological detachment. With this in mind it becomes vital to understand how connectivity agency is shaped by various contextual factors.

This qualitative study draws upon data collected from 27 teleworkers representing a variety of industries and roles. We employed a semi-structured interview protocol and analysed the data using Tracy’s (2013) iterative coding technique.

Factors that influence one’s likelihood or capacity to exercise connectivity agency exist at the individual, group or organisational level. Our data elucidate factors such as the provision of home and technological resources, the state of team norms and shared expectations and the level of organisational (dis)trust as having significant influence on whether a teleworker exercises connectivity agency, or whether attempts to do so fail altogether.

Whilst we have a comprehensive understanding of types of connectivity agency behaviours, it is unclear how one’s agency may be influenced by contextual factors. The originality and key contribution of our study is in enriching our understanding of connectivity agency to appreciate it as a dynamic phenomenon that is shaped by various contextual factors. This presents a variety of important insights for professionals leading, implementing or partaking in distributed work.

Drawing from the human resource management (HRM) literature and framed with self-determination theory, this article seeks to investigate the impact of a hybrid system of HRM, characterized by the integration of practices from high-involvement work systems (HIWS) and high-compliance work systems (HCWS), on employee well-being in China.

We hypothesize there is a positive relationship between the hybrid system and employee well-being, mediated by the satisfaction of basic psychological needs as proposed by self-determination theory. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a cross-sectional survey involving 337 employees from both an agricultural company and a bank in China.

Our dataset provides support for the hypotheses, indicating that hybrid human resource (HR) systems positively relate to employee well-being, with a positive association with work engagement and a negative association with emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, our findings reveal that this relationship is mediated by the satisfaction of basic psychological needs.

This paper contributes to the HRM literature in three significant ways. First, it explores the hybrid HRM system, which integrates high-involvement work systems (HIWS) and high-compliance work systems (HCWS), enhancing the theorization of HRM in a more comprehensive manner. Second, it utilizes self-determination theory (SDT) to illuminate the underlying mechanisms connecting hybrid HRM to employee well-being – a topic that has received limited attention in prior research. Lastly, we operationalize employee well-being by examining both work engagement and emotional exhaustion, thereby offering a comprehensive understanding of its multidimensional nature.

The purpose of this paper is to identify possible agents and levers to trigger the development and implementation of work place health promotion programs (WHPPs) in the Australian construction industry. Unlike most large workplaces and most high-risk workplaces, these programs are rarely found in the construction sector.

Qualitative interviews with 80 trades workers and site-based and off-site construction managers are used to reveal perceptions of the impact of WHPPs and ill-health and poor health behaviors on site activities with a view to identifying leverage points to introduce WHPPs in construction.

Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors are seen as impacting on sites in three main ways: productivity (broadly defined), safety and interpersonal relations. Results also reveal specific roles and levers for different actors in the supply chain and a clear desire for a collective, industry-based response to identified health problems.

High levels of chronic diseases in the construction industry means firms within the sector must make a concerted attempt to change patterns of behavior or face significant long-term health implications for their workforce. Reducing levels of health and longevity of the workforce, mean work performance, productivity and participation is likely to decline.

Although construction workers are recognized as one of the workforces at most risk for life limiting diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, relatively little work has investigated health and well-being considerations for construction workers. This study contributes by investigating possible levers and agents to create healthier workplaces in construction.