The relationship between training perception and employee engagement: Impacts of perception of reward and self-efficacy

Particularly, this research has investigated in the perception and satisfaction of employees on the organizational training activities they received, their self-efficacy and perception[r]

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

HOANG VU DUONG

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

TRAINING PERCEPTION AND

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: IMPACTS

OF PERCEPTION OF REWARD AND

SELF-EFFICACY

MASTER THESIS

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Hanoi, 2019

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

HOANG VU DUONG

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

TRAINING PERCEPTION AND

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: IMPACTS

OF PERCEPTION OF REWARD AND

ACKOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Tran Huy Phuong and Assoc Prof Kodo Yokozawa, who are my supervisors, for their guidance, encouragement and useful comments on my master thesis These considerably help

me in completing this research work

I also would like to say thank to Vietnam Japan University and all lecturers here, especially in program of MBA, for giving me opportunity to study and experience in international and academic environment, which provides me valuable knowledge both theoretically and practically

Furthermore, I want to thank all staffs of VJU, especially Ms Huong of from MBA program, for greatly supporting me during 2 years studying

Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to all of my friends, especially Ms Nguyen Huyen Trang and Ms Nguyen Thi Ngoc Anh for their help and encouragement, which academically and mentally support me at any difficult time Sincerely,

Hoang Vu Duong

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Research motivation 1

1.2 Research objectives 2

1.3 Research scope and objects 3

1.4 The structure of the paper 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Employee engagement 4

2.2 Employee training 10

2.3 Self-efficacy 17

2.4 Reward 21

2.5 Research questions 25

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 26

3.1 Research design 26

3.2 Conceptual research model 27

Variables and measuring instruments 27

Training perception 27

Self-efficacy 28

Reward 28

Employee engagement 29

Conceptual research model 30

3.3 Population, sample and data collection 31

Questionnaire design and administration 31

Population 32

Sample and data collection process 32

3.4 Sample demographics 33

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS 34

4.1 Data preparation 34

4.2 Descriptive statistics 34

4.3 Reliability and validity 36

4.3.1 Reliability 36

4.3.2 Validity 37

4.4 Pearson correlation 39

4.5 Regression analysis and hypotheses testing 39

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATION 46

5.1 Research findings 46

5.2 Contribution and implication 50

5.3 Limitation and future research 52

REFERENCES 54

APPENDIX 70

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Summary of antecedents and consequences of employee engagement 10

Figure 2.2 Training components and employee engagement model 15

Figure 2.3 Sources of Self-efficacy 19

Figure 2.4 Engagement Diagnostic Tool: National Health Service 22

Figure 2.5 Total reward system 23

Figure 3.1 Conceptual research model 30

Figure 4.1 Statistical moderating model 43

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Frequency of demographic information of respondents 33

Table 4.1: Coding of variables 34

Table 4.2: Descriptive statistics of all variables 35

Table 4.3: Overall Cronbach’s alpha for each variable and sub-variable 36

Table 4.4: Item-total statistics for Intrinsic reward variable 37

Table 4.5: Rotated component matrix 38

Table 4.6: Pearson correlation matrix 39

Table 4.7: Regression analysis (Dependent variable: Employee Engagement) 40

Table 4.8: Mediation analysis (Dependent variable: Employee engagement; Mediator: Self-efficacy) 42

Table 4.9: Moderation analysis 44

Table 5.1: Summary of the results of hypotheses testing 46

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research motivation

Employee engagement is increasingly becoming a vital concept which has been believed that it directly results in higher employee performance and organizational performance Mike Johnson (2004) wrote in his book named “The New Rules of Engagement” that “the ability to engage employees, to make them work with our business, is going to be one of the greatest organizational battles of the coming 10 years.”, which was a crucial prediction about the importance of employee engagement for the future of industries After that, several academic papers and practical reports have stressed employee engagement as an essential factor which may drive business outcomes In an article named as “Why Employee Engagement?” (2012) on Forbes by Kruse, there are 28 academic studies had been reviewed that they show the correlations between employee engagement and numerous other aspects of business administration: service; sale; quality; safety; retention; sale, profit and total shareholder returns Singh (2016) in his own study stated that “For past several years, employee engagement has been an important concern in the corporate world.” According to that paper, organizations cannot get and sustain their loyal customers by products and process only, but also need “highly-motivated, dedicated and involved employees”, or employees who has high engagement, in other word Thus, employee engagement in recent time has been widely and deeply investigated

in by organizations and researchers, in order to get better understanding about it, hence can utilize it for better outcomes However, Gallup’s report showed that only 15% of employees are engaged at work in 2017 worldwide Such numbers indicate several chances for increasing level of engagement, thus generate higher outcomes Since employee is the most valuable asset to organizations, it is obviously critical for companies to improve employee performance through types of training activities It

is a key factor in organizational management It is seemed that training is one of the

ways for organizations to enhance level of engagement of employees Annual reports

on employee satisfaction and engagement by Society of Human Resources Management showed many conditions for employee engagement, including training and development However, training and development took account for almost the lowest position in the recent years (SHRM, 2015, 2016, 2017), despite the fact that several studies mentioned significant impacts of training on engagement

These indications suggest the need to have a deeper look at such relationship and become the significant motivations for conducting this study

1.2 Research objectives

Basically, the objective of this research is to explore the link between employee training and employee engagement in current Vietnamese context According to a report about Employee Engagement & Retention in Vietnam (Towers Watson, 2010),

in the period of 4 years from 2007 to 2010, the percentage of employee engagement

in Vietnam had remained stable at around 78%, which was just ahead of the Asia Pacific Region Whereby, the possible reasons for this high level are management systems, employee perceptions on company image, effective performance evaluation, empowerment and sophistication However, Brands Vietnam – an electronic portal with high reputation in Vietnam, showed that this indication has declined considerably by about 10%, stayed at 70% in 2017, and even lower in 2015 and 2016 Although it still accounted for a good level in comparison with the level of the world and Asia, this decrease has been a warning for organizations in Vietnam Together with the number which is indicated by Gallup mentioned above, it is suggested that the employee engagement should be improved, and there have been several opportunities for enhancing the business as well as talent management for companies

in Vietnam

Thus, based on the practical situation and previous academic studies, this paper aims

to explain and explore the relationship of the two important Human Resources Management (HRM) aspects: employee training and employee engagement, in order

to propose suggestions to improve the level of engagement for organizations in

Vietnam, hence enrich the outcomes and performance for those companies

1.3 Research scope and objects

Basically, the scope of the study will be employees who have working experience for

a company in Vietnam and received training activities while working Besides, since

the employee engagement is a psychological and behavioral term, it is understandable

that other variables should be psychologically and behaviorally studied, from the

view point of employee Particularly, this research has investigated in the perception

and satisfaction of employees on the organizational training activities they received,

their self-efficacy and perception on reward received from organization, in order to

see the relationship between those factors on their perceived employee engagement

It will be discussed further on the next Chapter

1.4 The structure of the paper

The paper starts with a chapter which provide an introduction for the study After that,

it continues with 4 chapters of reviewing literature, method for study, data collection

and analysis, and findings and conclusions Particularly:

Chapter 1 discusses about the introduction with research motivation, research

objectives, scope and objects

Chapter 2 reviews and summarizes the previous papers which related to the variables

in this study, as well as proposes research questions and hypotheses

Chapter 3 provides information about the approach method, research model and

method of collecting data

Chapter 4 discusses the data analysis, and summarizes the results of the study

Chapter 5 concludes the work with the discussion about findings Besides, this

chapter also states the limitation and suggestions for future studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter deals with theoretical parts of the key concepts in this study, and reviews

of the papers which researched about related issues

2.1 Employee engagement

The definition of employee engagement, for nearly 3 decades of researching and developing, is still raising a controversy among researchers and organizations In other words, there still have no certain definition for this term, but it varied depends

on how researchers and people look at it

The first time when the term “engagement” had been conceptualized was in 1990, by Kahn At that time, he defined engagement as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances” According to Kahn, people with engagement are enabled to concomitantly express their preferred selves and completely satisfy their role requirements Kahn suggests three direct psychological conditions of meaningfulness, psychological safety and psychological availability as influencing employees’ engagement (May et al., 2004; Rich et al., 2010)

Generally, there were various determinations for employee engagement have been developed from the first time of conceptualization, and such term is still being controversy for academic researchers as well as organizations In the same year with Schaufeli’s UWES, Harter et al., had developed a conceptualization for employee engagement, using Gallup framework, as an “individual’s involvement and satisfaction with as well as enthusiasm for work” (Harter et al., 2002), which become one of the most cited pieces of practitioner literature (Liat Eldor, Eran Vigoda-Gadot, 2017) Saks argued to determine engagement as ‘a unique construct of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components… associated with individual role performance’ (Saks, 2006) In 2008, Macey and Schneider proposed a complicated taxonomy of

employee engagement, which, according to them, is viewed as “a desirable condition, has an organizational purpose, and connotes involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort and energy, so it has both attitudinal and behavioral components” It is easy to see that almost the developed definitions for employee engagement are related to individual psychology or behavior In fact, social aspect of engagement, which referred to the experience of connectedness with other people who could be colleagues but may be anyone that the work role provides an interface with (Kahn, 1990), was presented and acknowledged in scholars (Shuck and Wollard, 2010) (Soane et al., 2012) For example, Saks claimed that relationships with supervisors can be antecedents of engagement (Saks, 2006; cited by Soane et al., 2012) Notwithstanding, “yet social engagement had not been conceptualized or operationalized as a facet of engagement” (Soane et al., 2012) until Soane’s study, which determined employee engagement consists of 3 facets: Intellectual Engagement - the extent to which one is intellectually absorbed in work; Affective Engagement - the extent to which one experiences a state of positive affect relating

to one’s work role; and Social Engagement - the extent to which one is socially connected with the working environment and shares common values with colleagues (Soane et al., 2012)

This paper, with the opinion of author that engagement requires both individual and social psychological, values and behavioral statements, will follow the definition of Soane et al., consider employee engagement as collect of 3 facets mentioned above All of the term “employee engagement” from now can be understood this way

Personal engagement

Studies on engagement also have been conducted with several findings In 1990, Kahn, with the purpose of exploring the conditions at work by which people personally engage and disengage, had identified three psychological conditions - meaningfulness, safety, and availability, which help explaining the variance in people's bringing to and leaving out of themselves in their work role performances

(Kahn, 1990) It is easy to see that Kahn at the beginning conceptualized engagement around the psychological aspects of human beings In 1992, Kahn proposed an expansion in theoretical issue of his work Such expansion delineates the concept of psychological presence, its dimensions (attentiveness, connectedness, integration, and focus), and their impact on personal engagement (Michelle R Simpson, 2009)

At that time, Kahn theorizes some factors that preceding the psychological conditions

of meaningfulness, safety, and availability, consists of various work elements, social systems, and individual distractions Beside that conceptualization, his findings suggested that outcomes of personal engagement may include performance quality and productivity It means, when an individual finds his job meaningful, feels safe, and has the essential resources in their work role both externally and internally, personal engagement will be led to, and the individual is stated to be ‘‘fully present’’ (Kahn, 1992) In 2004, May et al., based on Kahn’s studies, conducted a research that proposed an individual engagement model at work Such research investigated in Kahn’s three psychological conditions, as well as put in various determinants of personal engagement such as job enrichment, relations, self-consciousness, activities

or resources (May et al., 2004; Michelle R Simpson, 2009)

Burnout/Engagement

Follow another school of engagement, Maslach and Leiter in their study which aimed

at examining how the six areas of work life and the three dimensions of burnout/engagement affect the perception of employee about the change within organization, found that there were a mediating effect of burnout/engagement that linked organizational context and organizational changes (Maslach and Leiter, 1997) After that, several academic studies were built upon Maslach and Leiter’s finding, resulted in drives and consequences of engagement For instance, Laschinger and Finegan proposed three models suggest empowerment has indirect effects on burnout/work engagement through various areas of work life (Laschinger et al., 2005; Michelle R Simpson, 2009) One year later, burnout had been found that has partially mediating effect on the relationship between work life and adverse events

Whereby, a working environment which enabled higher support for professional practice, would lead to greater engagement (Leiter and Laschinger, 2006)

Work engagement

Schaufeli et al., with the definition of engagement consist of 3 components: vigor, dedication and absorption, in which vigor and dedication are two opposite components to burnout dimension (emotional exhaustion and cynicism), developed the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale in 2003, and used it to test the relationship between job resources, engagement and turnover intention The result suggested that work engagement mediated the link between job resources and turnover intention (Schaufeli et al., 2002, 2003, 2004) Moreover, since the measurement tool UWES were developed, “a growing body of research focusing on this construct has evolved” (Michelle R Simpson, 2009) Simpson in his research stated that a number of studies emphasized at the antecedents and/or consequences of work engagement, in which, the organizational factors were illustrated that having a vital influence in predicting work engagement, but not individual factors One of the illustrations is the result of several studies, which pointed out that job resources significantly predicted work engagement (Hakenen et al., 2006; Llorens et al., 2006; Mauno et al., 2007; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004; Xanthopoulou et al., 2007) Likewise, researchers found that employees who have higher level of control, reward, values, or better work life experience would be more engaged to work (Koyuncu, 2006)

Additionally, previous empirical studies also indicated that the turnover intention, organizational commitment, service climate and customer loyalty were the potential consequences of work engagement (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004; Hakenen et al., 2006; Richardsen et al., 2006; Salanova et al., 2005) Besides, the demonstration of the mediating effect of work engagement for the relationship between job resources (career opportunities, supervisor coaching, role-clarity, and autonomy) and the organizational outcomes were found in several studies (Michelle R Simpson, 2009)

Employee engagement

When it comes to employee engagement, with the own developed definition, Harter had investigated engagement that way and generalized relationship were found between unit-level employee satisfaction-engagement and the 5 organizational outcomes: profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, employee safety, turnover Self-efficacy, organizational-based self-esteem, and optimism mediate the relationship between job resources and work engagement and exhaustion, and influence the perception of job resources (Xanthopoulou, 2007)

More recently, in a study which aimed at testing the influence of employee engagement to the discretionary effort and turnover intention, the result showed that three conditions developed by Kahn in 1990 and 1992 which are meaningfulness, safety and availability engagement, have no significant impact on discretionary effort, but two of them (meaningfulness and availability) negatively affect to employee turnover intention, in the constraints of controlled job fit, affective commitment and psychological climate (Shuck et al., 2011) 3 year later, a research using UWES-9 –

a transformation of UWES as measurement for employee work engagement, stated that learning opportunity, coworker support, and supervisor support have a positive effect on work engagement (Sarti, 2014) However, there were no indication with the same result for other aspects of job resources, such as financial reward or performance feedback, which had been tested together with above 3 variables in his paper Besides, leadership were one of the organizational conditions which had been exploited in the relationship with engagement Different styles of leadership brought different effects

on employee engagement While servant leadership had slight effect on employee engagement, transformational leadership style created a more essential impact Otherwise, transactional leadership were suggested that should be transformed, in order to gather a suitable environment which can facilitate higher level of engagement behavior (Shuck and Herd, 2012; De Clercq et al., 2014) (Shuck et al., 2014) explored the mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between perceived support for participation in HRD practices and intention to turnover and

found that employee engagement and its components, such as cognitive, emotional, behavioral engagement, have partial mediating effects

Empirically, Saks in 2006 proposed a model of antecedents and consequences of employee engagement In that model, employee engagement was categorized into 2 aspects: job engagement and organizational engagement According to Saks, antecedents of engagement include job characteristics, perceived organizational support, perceived supervisor support, rewards and recognition, procedural justice, distributive justice; and its consequences consist of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, intention to quit, and OCB However, the results of his study showed the effects will depends on which variables of antecedents and consequences, and which types of engagement among 2 types above It means that there will be a significant meaning by categorizing employee engagement

Figure 2.1 shows the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement which were synthesized from selected previous related studies Accordingly, job resources including learning chance, coworker support, and supervisor support, perceived support for participation in HRD practices, servant and transformational leadership, training perception, colleague’s incivility and work meanings were determined as the antecedents of engagement (Lee et al., 2017) In which, transformational leadership had the highest frequency of appearance in academic studies about the antecedents of employee engagement More generally, most of leadership styles have been researched as preceding factors of engagement in conceptual studies, while servant leadership has been found in the result of empirical papers Goal congruence and social interaction also had been studied as engagement precursory but researchers found that there was no strong impact of them on the research object Otherwise, consequences which are led to by engagement consist of working behavior, turnover rate, knowledge creation, several organizational outcomes such as working performance and benefit, organizational citizenship behavior, in which employee performance improvement were emphasized, as an ultimate purpose for studying and implementing employee engagement Thus, it is suggested that engagement will

strongly positively drive working performance of employees in order to reach greater organizational outcomes

Figure 2.1 Summary of antecedents and consequences of employee engagement

(Source: Lee et al., 2017) Hence, it can be said that which figure 1 show express not only the support for the work of Saks, but also the contribution for the problem of antecedents and consequences of employee engagement, through effort of several academic researchers

2.2 Employee training

Training from long time ago has been viewed as a completely essential aspects in making the organization profitable Landy gave out a definition that job training is “a set of planned activities on the part of an organization to increase the job knowledge and skills or to modify the attitudes and social behavior of its members in ways consistent with the goals of the organization and the requirements of the job” (Landy,

Consequences

Work role behavior Turnover intention Organizational knowledge

creation Outcome variables (in-role performance, turnover intentions, OCB) Organizational citizenship

behavior (OCB)

Discretionary effort Perceptions of HRD practices

1985) Michel Armstrong in another definition, said that “Training is systematic development of the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by an individual to perform adequately a given task or job” (Armstrong, 2001) More recently, Ross Holland (2012) has stated that training is “any planned activity to transfer or modify knowledge, skills, and attitude through learning experiences Personnel may require training for variety of reasons, including the need to maintain levels of competence and respond to the demand of changing circumstances and new approaches and technologies” Training primarily linked to the improvement and upgradation of the skills and knowledge of the employees and focuses on employee behavior at large to improve current and future state of job performance (Malik et al., 2013)

In this study, the perception of employee satisfaction on the training activity that they participate in at the workplace will be considered as an independent variable and be investigated to find out its correlations with other variables Schmidt in his work combined the two definitions of employee training (Landy, 1985; Patrick, 2000) and employee job satisfaction (Spector, 1997) into a term “job training satisfaction”, which is defined by himself as how people perceive about the job training they receive (Schmidt, 2007) Conducted researches also showed related result about training perception For example, a favorable relationship between employee work training and their commitment with the company Accordingly, HRD should “adapt new research methods to demonstrate to organizational decision makers that training and development contributes to desired workplace attitudes… which may in turn influence behaviors such as absenteeism and turnover” (Bartlett, 2001; cited by Schmidt, 2007) In the study of training for new employees, Tannenbaum et al (1991) stated that positive or negative attitudes and impressions which employees may have will depends strongly on their job training at workplace Schmidt in his work also cited suggestion that “a large part of the worker’s sense of job satisfaction can be attributed to workplace learning opportunities” (Rowden and Conine, 2003) Finally,

he found that employee satisfaction about job training highly correlated to overall job satisfaction with the scope of employees was working in customer contact positions

Besides, he recommended that this correlation is proper among variety of occupational fields

Employees minds and behavior within organizations are under a considerable impact

of their perception on training (Mohammed, 2017) Beforehand, there was a notation that more positively employees perceive training activities in their workplace, more greatly they achieve the level of motivating effect for taking training (Ahmad and Bakar, 2003) In the same work they said that the investment which organization put

in training will facilitate them to get higher level of commitment from their employees It is considered as one of the most vital individual perceptions which influence to attitudes and behaviors (Guest, 2002) The success of training activities will strongly depend upon not just employee’s individual personality but also their perception about its benefits or outcomes (Burke and Hutchins, 2007) Additionally, employee perception about training was suggested to be varied by different ways due

to the differences in experience and thoughts about its purposes (Nishi, Lepak, and Schneider, 2008) There has academical demonstration indicated that such perception has considerable impacts on productivity, performance and level of engagement (Paul

et al., 2003; Kuvass et al., 2009; Salanova, 2005)

Particularly, employee training is studied and referred as a vital part of HR practices for creating improvement for work and organizational outcomes and employee behavior There are several papers studied the impacts of training on the performance

of the employees A study in 2013 examined the influence of training on performance and presented that “organizational performance is significantly determined by training imparted to the employees” Accordingly, training is an important antecedent

of performance (Zahid, 2013) In the same year, Nassazi conducted a study about the impact of training on employee performance in a Uganda telecommunication company The results reported that training and development have an impact on the performance of employees with regards to their jobs (Nassazi, 2013) There were also positive attitudes had been found towards the influence of training to the employees working performance, despite some constraints which control some of the effects of

the training activities (Mohammed Al-Mzary et al., 2015) The similar effect was also indicated by works of several other researchers, that training significantly positively drives employee performance (Elnaga et al., 2013; Aragón, 2014; Amadi, 2014) Besides, training has been found that it affects employee satisfaction Chepkosgey et al., proposed a framework of relationship between various types of training program and employee satisfaction and working attitude His work found out that “training had a great impact on the job satisfaction and retention of the employees” and “is essential in keeping employees apt in their work so that they can gain satisfaction from it.” (Chepkosgey et al., 2015) Training has strongly positively influenced to employee job satisfaction (Taormina, 1999; Garcia, 2005) This statement also was supported by work of Okechukwu, which proved the hypothesis that the relationship between training and employee satisfaction was clearly illustrated (Okechukwu, 2017) Additionally, paper of Truitt indicated a significant support for the hypothesis that “adequate job training is related to positive attitudes about job proficiency and that having adequate job training is related to positive attitudes about job training” Training and its positive effects on employee attitude and proficiencies create long-lasting stakeholders and could serve as the binding force for business success during trouble times (Truitt, 2011)

Although there has number of researches investigated components of human resources management practices, and its connection with level of engagement of employees, few studies have been found which studied direct influences of individual

HR functions, to such important concept (Suan, 2014; Salanova, 2005; cited by Ahmed, 2015) According to Ahmed et al (2015), employee training is empirically found prominent in influencing turnover intentions, organizational citizenship behavior (Skarlicki, 1997), commitment and motivation (Sahinidis, 2008), performance (Frayne, 2000; Palmen, 2013), post-training organizational commitment, job satisfaction (Schmidt, 2007) Demerouti et al (2010) emphasized that training helped the employees to modify their behaviors, emotions to enhance their skills and competencies It is related to engagement Simultaneously, employee training has

also been empirically tested with employee engagement, but mainly just as part of HRM practices and not so direct (Ahmed et al., 2015) Salanova (2005) has found that organizational resources, including training factor, had strong impacts on employee engagement In another research, Luthan (2010) found that training intervention significantly increased both the level of performance and psychological capital, which consists of engagement behavior

Employee training and employee engagement

There are few previous studies empirically investigated directly in the relationship between employee training and employee engagement In the research which exploring engagement behavior among more than hundred employees in a Malaysian hotel, the result has shown a strong influence to the engagement level resulted from training activities (Salanova et al., 2006) With the same concept, it is suggested that work engagement can be enhanced through improving on the service trainings provided (Suan et al, 2014) In 2015, Fletcher, in order to explore the mediating effects of both personal role engagement and work engagement on the relationship between training perceptions and work role behaviors, and compare the degrees of two engagements His finding showed that personal role engagement has a stronger effect on the relationship between training perceptions and task proficiency as well

as training perceptions and task adaptability However, there is no difference between the mediating effects of the two engagements on the relationship between training perceptions and task proactivity (Fletcher, 2015) Training could predict employee engagement through its content and benefit that employees perceived It was able to

be concluded that the essential relationship which connect training and engagement has been highlighted in some of the previous human resources management (HRM) related studies In other words, training activities may help organization to enhance the level of engagement at work Study of Ahmed et al., investigated the link between training and engagement, and proposed a model which indicates such relationship In that model training variable was categorized into 4 components including need assessment, training design, trainer and delivery, and evaluation By conceptually

conducting, he found that all of the components have positive relations with training employee engagement and thus concluded that “employee training will be positively related with post-training employee engagement” (Ahmed et al., 2015)

post-Figure 2.2 Training components and employee engagement model

(Source: Ahmed et al., 2015) Although there were number of studies investigated employee training and its relationship with employee engagement from the past which indicated the positive impact, recent researches, however, released some inconsistent results Semwal et al (2017) conducted study from a sample of 127 employees in IT companies and indicated that training vitally contribute to all components of engagement Notwithstanding, in the effort to find the impact of training and development on engagement from Pakistani banking sector, Ezam et al., (2018) failed to reject the

hypothesis that “training has no significant impact on employees’ engagement” In other words, training which employees received might not gather high level of employee engagement (Ezam et al., 2018) Such results seem to be associated with the report results provided by Gallup and SHRM mentioned in the first Chapter

Gap analysis

As mentioned above, the results of recent studies about such relationship were inconsistent Not just that, several newspaper articles and reports by different organizations has indicated the weak connection between training and employee engagement The inconsistency in the results may be caused by different contexts of sample, or different in working fields to be more specific Together with studies have been reviewed in the previous sections, it is indicated that the results are limited in terms of generalizability In other words, there is a gap in literature since studies mainly focused on single working field or single country Therefore, the findings of this paper may propose a different view on employee engagement in the context of Vietnam Besides, although there has papers which conduct the link between training and engagement, there were very few studies which investigate training as a single individual function, but as a component of HRD have been found Consequently, the result of relationship between those two variables may be affected by employees’ perception on other HRD components Another possible reason of this inconsistency

is that the relationship between employee training and employee engagement may be affected by some other relating factors Base on above assumptions, there are two other variables have been introduced in this paper, with the purposes of testing their different effects on the link between training and engagement Specifically, self-efficacy and reward will be tested whether they have mediating effect and moderating effect respectively on such relationship Since the results found by academic researchers and organizations have conflicted themselves, there might a suggestion that different context will illustrate different influences to the research objects as well

as the results Consequently, at first the link between employee training and employee

engagement will be tested in this paper, in order to explore their relationship within Vietnamese workplace

H1: Employee training positively influence employee engagement

2.3 Self-efficacy

Definition of self-efficacy is given by Bandura (1977), which considered self-efficacy

as the belief of individuals in their ability to perform a given task and to meet situational demands According to Bergh and Theron (1999) cited in Stadler and Kotze (2006), self-efficacy determines whether a person will pursue a specific goal and how much effort will be put into attaining the stated objective

Self-efficacy has three dimensions: magnitude, the level of task difficulty a person believes she can attain; strength, the conviction regarding magnitude as strong or weak; and generality, the degree to which the expectation is generalized across situations (Fred C Lunenburg, 2011) The higher the level of self-efficacy, the more likely the individual will be motivated to persevere in attaining the objective, even if there are obstacles impeding him/her An employee’s sense of capability influences his perception, motivation, and performance (Bandura, 1997)

Bandura pointed out three ways that self-efficacy can influences learning and performance First, it has impacts on the employees’ goals selection in working, which might be at low level if they have low self-efficacy, and reversely Besides, self-efficacy affects employees’ learning behavior and their endeavors they put into the job Thirdly, employee perseverance in attempting and adapting to new or troublesome missions is also influenced by their perception of self-efficacy The higher level of self-efficacy, the more confident they are in perceiving and practically performing and tasks Thus, they will be more persistent in solving the difficulties (Bandura, 1982) All there effects above may significantly drive the quality of performance of employees

Due to the importance of self-efficacy at work, it is essential to determine what lead

to it In 1997, Bandura proposed a model of sources of self-efficacy Accordingly, there are four key factors that result in individual self-efficacy, including:

Past performance – the most important source which may provide employees the

confidence It is assumed that workers who have been successful in their previous job-related work will be more likely to have high self-efficacy

Vicarious experience – this supposed that one’s self-efficacy can be generated by

seeing other person or co-worker’s success in doing tasks It is suggested that this source will work best when ones see others who have similar attributes, characteristics or abilities

Verbal persuasion – employees’ level of self-efficacy might be increase by

persuading them that they have great qualification to complete the tasks, based on the Pygmalion effect, the phenomenon whereby expectation of people can influence the performance of a particular person Studies showed that employees may perform more greatly when their supervisors or managers believe that they can do successfully However, the effectiveness of this source may be varied depends on various conditions (Lunenburg, 2011)

Emotional cues – Bandura argued that if employee find something not suitable in his

task, or expect failure, will be likely to get some physiological symptoms Such symptoms may different depending on individuals, but normally they will lead to low outcomes

Figure 2.3 Sources of Self-efficacy (Source: Bandura, 1997)

It might be realized that all of the sources in this model have strong link with employee training For example, training enable employees doing their tasks under the guidance and supervision of the trainers, hence they could have chance to perform without considerable mistakes, or have chance to fix the wrong thing immediately

Thus, past performance would be generated, and it will be even good performance

thank to the training, finally can raise self-efficacy Besides, training can provide

employee vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and positive feeling about their

ability and the task, via several types of activities such as discussing, observing or experiencing Generally, training in the workplace could help employees increase their perception of self-efficacy

According to Bandura (1986, 1997), self-efficacy beliefs are characterized as being task- or domain-specific and are suggested to motivate better performance in several ways First, self-efficacy beliefs affect feelings of competency and confidence in one’s perceived skill to perform a required task, which means they strive to reach their goals Next, self-efficacy beliefs motivate better performance by increasing the sense of control or agency an individual has over one’s life circumstances Additionally, self-efficacy beliefs concern a perception that effort will lead to

successful out-comes, which increases the individual’s ability to sustain effort when pursuing goals (Carter et al., 2016) In the series of papers that discovering the power

of self-efficacy by Lorente, the results indicated the association of self-efficacy with numerous important variables Self-efficacy positively related to job and personal resources, which in turn result in engagement, among construction workers; self-efficacy and work engagement play the role of mediators in the relationship of transformational leadership and extra-role working performance (Lorente, 2009) The study by Frayne and Geringer (2000) empirically examined the role of self-efficacy

in mediating the relationship between self-management training and job performance Such researchers noted that self-efficacy partially mediated the relationship between self-management training and two of the performance measures was very important for theory and practice (Carter et al., 2016) Besides, Carter (2016) in his research stated that there are considerable conceptual parallels between self-efficacy and employee engagement, in the construction of individual motivations and mentioned

it as an overlap Then, his findings showed that self-efficacy and employee engagement independently positively affect the outcomes of performance, however the effects will vary depends on the nature of task and the performance appraisal measurement High-level of self-efficacy may differ the results and consequences both positively and negatively based on different activities and behaviors (Lorente, 2009) Besides, several studies have found a significant and consistent relationship between self-efficacy and employee personal behavior in several aspects such as sales (Peterson & Byron, 2008), proactive behavior (Parker, Williams, & Turner, 2006), and work-related performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998) (Carter et al., 2016) For instance, lacking of self-efficacy was illustrated as a vital factor which caused the negative feelings of employees in their workplace, thus raised the level of depression and anxiety (Schwarzer, 1999 cited by Ventura et al., 2015), and finally burnout (Cherniss, 1993; Llorens, García, & Salanova, 2005), consequently In contrast, high level of self-efficacy drives optimistic behavior and emotion, which facilitate the employee engagement (Llorens, Schaufeli, et al., 2007; Salanova, Llorens, et al., 2011; Vera et al., 2012) The relationship between self-efficacy and work engagement

is under the mediating impacts of employees’ perception of work and family demand, and work – life balance In particular, work – family demand negatively significantly mediated the link between self-efficacy and work – life balance; but the positive effect was found with the mediating role of work – life balance which influence the relationship between self-efficacy and employee engagement (Wen et al., 2017) Beforehand, in 2007, Xanthopoulou indicated that self-efficacy, as one of three personal resources, had mediating effect on work engagement Moreover, a research found that self-efficacy plays a vital role in predicting the perception of employees

on challenge and hindrance demands, which are strongly related to burnout and engagement Particularly, the more self-efficacy employees have, the more they will engage to work, and conversely (Ventura et al., 2015)

Since the relationship between training and employee engagement are still in concern and the work of researchers provide inconsistent result about it, the author of this paper assumes this relationship is under a mediating effect of another variable When considering and reviewing self-efficacy as a possible factor, the author found that related result almost associated with the assumption Consequently, self-efficacy has been chosen as mediator and its effect on the focused relationship will be tested in this study

H2: Employee’s self-efficacy positively mediates the relationship between employee training and employee engagement

2.4 Reward

Due to the diversity of classifications, this study follows the definition of reward which is the combination of the works of Pitts Collins and Schermerhorn et al., which

in particular considers reward as:

“Reward is the benefits that arise from performing a task, rendering a service or discharging a responsibility.” (Collins, 1995), which can be categorized into 2 types: intrinsic reward and extrinsic reward “Intrinsic rewards are valued outcomes

received as internal enjoyment of task performance”; “Extrinsic rewards are valued outcomes received from an external source or person” (Schermerhorn et al., 2014) Motivation, including reward, is an essential component in building employee engagement and several related aspects, for the final purpose of enhancing performance and generating organizational outcomes The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) identified a model of employee engagement, in which engagement is the combination of three components: commitment, motivation and organizational citizenship behavior According to IES, employee who engage will highly believe in their organizations and consider their work for making organizations better

Immediate

management

Communication

Equal opportunities

Pay and benefits

Health and safety

Co-operation

Family friendliness

Figure 2.4 Engagement Diagnostic Tool: National Health Service

(Source: Robinson et al., 2004, Institute for Employment Studies)

Previous results of studies provided by numerous researchers and organizations also show that reward in many types can be an important practice that drive employee engagement and organizational performances “Individual performance-related pay and profit-related bonuses” were referred to 2 of 18 HRD practices which influence performance and commitment of employees (Guest, 2003) Team rewards and

Feeling valued and evolved

incentive pay were found as the important factors which are associated with high performance (Thompson, 2000)

Besides, IES studied the National Health Service in UK and indicated that pay and benefits, and opportunities, considerably affect employee engagement (Robinson et

al - IES, 2004) Also, in this year, there had a study show that the link between pay and work-related performance put a significant impact on employees’ intention to give discretionary effort to work (Corporate Leadership Council, 2004) Engagement and commitment are also under the strong impacts of fair pay (Heintzman and Marson, 2005) Performance pay is illustrated as one the causes of engagement among top performers of organization (WorldatWork, 2004) WorldatWork also proposed a model of total reward system, which indicate multi-directional relationships among the variables of organizational practices, reward, satisfaction, engagement and performance, in which the role of total reward is centralized and highly appreciated

Figure 2.5 Total reward system (Source: WorldatWork journal, 2008) Reward, in its relationship with engagement, is also empirically studied by several researchers Koyuncu et al (2006) in the effort to examine potential antecedents and consequences of work engagement, conducted research with a sample of 286 women managers and professionals at Turkish bank and found that Work-life experiences, consists of rewards, predicted work engagement In determining whether there is a

Employee satisfaction and engagement

Business performance and results

Attract Motivate Retain

relationship between rewards, trust and engagement in South African workplace, reward is tested that can be able to predict trust and engagement (Victor et al., 2016) Additionally, total reward system is demonstrated that having a small-to-moderate correlation with employee engagement; and it is difficult to conclude that which category of total reward had the most effect on engagement (Hoole et al., 2016) Especially, using both intrinsic and extrinsic reward can help organizations elevate the rate of employee engagement (Ram and Prabhakar, 2011) Similar result was also found out even earlier by Roberts and Davenport, that a workplace where reaps more kinds of rewards will be able to generate engagement among their employees (Roberts et al., 2002) In a study about the relationship between intrinsic reward and employee engagement in South African, the result showed that there had a considerable correlation between the two variables, and such correlation vary under the impacts of some control variables such as gender or age Godday et al (2013) studied 273 bank employees and found that extrinsic rewards had more impacts related to job satisfaction than intrinsic rewards More recently, Khan et al.’s study (2017) findings expressed that both intrinsic and extrinsic reward positively influence employee performance; but intrinsic reward has higher effect; and no correlation between extrinsic and intrinsic reward

Appropriate reward is significant in enhancing employee engagement (Saks, 2006)

In other words, if reward being perceived appropriate by employees to their ability, will motivate them to be more engaged and give more effort Employees will feel that their ability and performance being highly appreciated by the organization, and thus engage more with the work when reward is at right place Previous studies recommended that various reward systems which organizations apply will essentially positively affect to employee attitude and behavior at work in different ways (Maister; Guthrie, cited by Waal & Jansen, 2013) For example, employees who is paid out stock and dividend will feel highly involved and engaged because their benefit will stick to organizational performance; or they will feel more responsible and decisive

if the reward system enable them to strengthen their competencies and make decision

themselves Researchers also suggest that reward which is perceived as fair among employees and proportional to their contributions and organizational outcomes will motivate employees to commit, engage and exert in the workplace (Jackson, Rossi, Hoover, and Johnson, 2012) The more fairly the employee believes they are rewarded, the greater level of engagement he or she will have in the jobs, and go further beyond the routine expectations to achieve higher performance and outcomes (Chebat et al., 2002) In result, reward is indicated as a great important motivation mechanism in improving employee behavior and attitude, which help support organizational goals (Haal-Ellis, 2014; Waal and Jansen, 2013)

From the results of various academic works, it may be concluded that the diversification of employees’ perception on how they are rewarded will differ their feelings, their engagement, and their attitude and behavior at work, based on their self-beliefs on ability and contributions, as well as the job and organizational resources that they perceived Consequently, reward has been selected to be a moderator for testing its impacts on the link between employees’ perception of training and employee engagement

H3: Reward moderates the impact of training perception on employee engagement, that this impact will be stronger when employees’ perception of reward becomes more positive

2.5 Research questions

This study is conducted primarily aiming at answering below research questions:

 What is the relationship between employee training and employee engagement

in Vietnamese workplace context?

 Are there any impacts from self-efficacy and reward on the relationship between employee training and employee engagement separately?

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the conceptual research model and measuring instruments will be explained in detail Simultaneously, the author will introduce the research method used to conduct the study, including data collection method and procedure, questionnaire design and sampling design

3.1 Research design

The quantitative research approach is specialized in “testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables” (Creswell et al., 2018) These variables can be respectively statistically measured and analyzed in form of numbers, by using some kinds of instrument and statistical procedure The objective of this paper is explaining the relationship between variables: employee training perception and employee engagement, and through reviewing previous literatures, the author wants

to explore more such relationship under impact of other factors, driving several assumptions and hypotheses which are proposed to be tested deductively Thus, based

on the viewpoint of Creswell et al, the quantitative approach is suitable for conducting this study Quantitative methodology has been chosen for using in this paper, in terms

of collecting and analyzing primary data Besides, background theories would be completed by secondary data, which were descriptive, explanatory and literature review

Among several ways of research design, survey research is chosen for conducting this paper “Survey research provides a quantitative or numeric description of trends, attitudes, or opinions of a population by studying a sample of population.” (Creswell, 2018) In this study, the author has the intention to collect data about perception and opinion of employee on their training received, their self-efficacy, reward and level

of engagement, in order to investigate the relationships among them Hence, survey research is considered as the most suitable approach A survey using questionnaire which including a number of close-ended questions, or items, would be distributed to the citizens who meet the requirement mentioned in “Scope of the study” part

Collected data would be analyzed using SPSS software The results and analyses will

be discussed later in chapter 3

3.2 Conceptual research model

Variables and measuring instruments

In this study, the proposed conceptual research model was a moderated mediation model with 4 variables: perception on training satisfaction, self-efficacy, reward and employee engagement The previous papers were reviewed to describe the variables and their theoretical characteristics, as well as their related issues This approach enables the authors to get and provide better understanding about them within the available evidences, as well as generate some assumptions in order to proposed the conceptual framework and hypotheses

Training perception

Various scales of measuring training satisfaction were developed by different researchers from the past In this study, the instrument used for measuring this variable is adopted from The Job Training and Job Satisfaction Survey (JTJSS) which developed and used in the works of Schmidt (2007) The JTJSS was originated from Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1997) and was adjusted by Schmidt for his studies The scale used in this study consists of 8 items which measure the overall satisfaction

of employee about training activity they received on the job and the support of organization for such training activity, by using 5-point Likert scale The examples

of item are “Overall, the training I receive on the job meets my needs.”, “Overall, I

am satisfied with the amount of training I receive on the job.” or “In my department, learning is planned and purposeful rather than accidental.” Originally, the JTJSS uses 6-point Likert scale to measure items Results of studies which comparing the different range of Likert scale showed that according to the construct validity, it was considered not different in number of components between 6-point or 5-point Likert scale (Chomeya, 2010); or there is a similarity between those two ranges of scale in terms of statistical information such as mean, standard deviation, correlation,

reliability or validity (Leung, 2011) Besides, a forum hosted by Infosurv – a research service organization – found that the 5-point scale is more preferred, with the agreement of 71% of researchers who participated in They claimed that the 5-point scale has nice midpoint that indicates the neutral opinion, which is a “legitimate opinion that exists among respondents.” The lack of neutral point may lead to the biases of the respondents, since they are forced to choose either positive or negative side (Infosurv, 2006) For those reasons, the author of this paper decided to choose

5-point scale to use for measuring the training satisfaction

Self-efficacy

From the late of 20th century, researchers become keen on the term general efficacy (GSE), “a more trait-like generality dimension of self-efficacy” (Chen et al., 2001) Judge, Erez et al (1998) gave a definition of GSE that “individuals’ perception

self-of their ability to perform across a variety self-of different situations” Among several scales developed to measure GSE, the works by Sherer et al (1982) seems to be the most widely used scale (Chen et al., 2001) Chen’s work developed a new GSE scale (NGSE) as well as compared his own tool to SGSE through 3 studies and found that NGSE has higher advances in terms of both reliability and validity, although it is shorter Moreover, in the work for comparing 3 of GSE scales including NGSE, the result indicated a considerable strength of NGSE related to the discrimination, information of item and relative efficiency (Charles et al., 2006) Hence, the author decided to use NGSE to measure self-efficacy The scale includes 8 5-point Likert scale items, such as “I will be able to achieve most of the goals that I set for myself.”

or “When facing difficult tasks, I am certain that I will accomplish them.”

Reward

For measuring perception on reward, this study uses the scale which develop by works of Kuvaas et al (2006, 2009) and Dysvik et al (2013), and those scales was adopted by Kuvaas et al (2017) in order to investigate the difference in effects between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to employee outcome The scale consists

of 10 items which measuring 2 different types of reward For intrinsic reward (IR)

there has 6 items, and 4 items for extrinsic reward (ER) All items are evaluated follow 5-point Likert scale The example items are “The tasks I do at work are enjoyable.” or “My job is meaningful.” for intrinsic type and “It is important for me

to have an external incentive to strive for in order to do a good job.” for extrinsic type

Employee engagement

The ISA engagement scale, which is developed by Soane et al (2012), was adopted

to use in this paper According to Soane and colleagues, there has three conditions for engagement: focus is provided, activation, and positive affect; simultaneously there has three dimensions of engagement: intellectual engagement (IE), affective engagement (AE) and social engagement (SE), as mentioned in the last chapter (Soane et al., 2012) Thus, Soane’s work developed the ISA engagement scale based

on those proposals Originally, the scale has 9 items with 7-point Likert scale, divided equally into 3 above facets of engagement The examples items are “I focus hard on

my work.”, “I share the same work values as my colleagues.” and “I feel positive about my work.” The validation process revealed that ISA engagement scale could

be more beneficial than one of the most widely used instrument for measuring engagement – UWES – in terms of individual-level behavior prediction (Fletcher and Robinson, 2014)

This study, however, adjusted from 7-point to 5-point scale to measure this variable

A study indicated that the 5-point scale is highly recommended due to the decrease

of the frustration level of respondents and increase response rate and response quality (Sachdev, S B., & Verma, H V., 2004) Besides, Dawes, J (2008) stated that with a 5-point scale, it is quite simple for the interviewer to read out the complete list of scale descriptors

Conceptual research model

Figure 3.1 Conceptual research model

Hypotheses:

H1: Employee training positively influence employee engagement

H2: Employee’s self-efficacy positively mediates the relationship between employee training and employee engagement

H3: Reward moderates the impact of training perception on employee engagement, that this impact will be stronger when employees’ perception of reward becomes more positive

Training

perception

(TR)

Self-efficacy (SELF)

Employee engagement (EE)

3.3 Population, sample and data collection

Questionnaire design and administration

After reviewing carefully previous literature, the author designed questionnaire and constructed the survey based on the studies in the past, which was proved in terms of reliability and validity of variables The questionnaire consists of 6 sections:

The first section including 2 yes/no questions, which are used to aim at eliminating the unsuitable respondents who have not worked or received any training activity before December 2018

The second section including some demographic questions, which ask respondents to provide some individual information about age, gender, highest position at work, and average income

The next sections were used to ask respondents to rate their agree or disagree level

on various items about training perception, self-efficacy, perception on reward, and engagement to measure those variables The range of the scale is from 1 to 5, in which point 1 indicates “totally disagree” and point 5 indicates “totally agree” Based on that, respondents will choose which point is the most suitable for each item, in their opinion The original version of items is in English, and it is translated to Vietnamese Translate back process was also applied for reconfirming that those translated items are understood right way compare to the original version The collected data was linked to an excel spreadsheet and be kept confidential as commitment of the author The begin of the questionnaire contains introduction to the research, including a declaration of statement of purpose and acknowledgement, thus make the respondents being clear about the objective of the survey as well as the research Each following section is also begun with introduction of its main purpose and the brief instruction for the respondents At the end of the survey, a thank-you statement was attached for expressing author’s gratitude to the respondents

The pilot test also applied for this questionnaire 10 respondents were asked for not only answering the questions but also commenting on the content and the difficulties they met while the answer Thank to that, some items were modified for more easily understanding

Population

The population of this research is employees who is currently working or used to work in the creative industry in organizations located in Vietnam, and received training activity while working There is one more condition that the received training activity happened before December 2018, since the author believe that employees need time to convert what they gained from training into valuable skills and knowledge

Sample and data collection process

The author uses nonprobability sampling method, “in which respondents are chosen based on their convenience and availability” (Creswell et al., 2018) Since the author decided to distribute questionnaire survey online, this method is the most suitable In this research, email and social network are selected to use for distributing survey to gather data from respondents The survey is designed in online form by using Google’s platform Particularly:

Through email: the survey was delivered to emails of 220 representatives of organizations in Vietnam, with invitation letter and the short URL of the online survey, that kindly ask the individuals in charge of those emails respond carefully

By this way, 15 valid responses were collected, with the response rate of 6.8% Through social network: The URL of the survey was posted on the different types of social network such as Facebook, LinkedIn… with a kind request of responding The main target for posting is the communities of people who are interested in creative industry (marketing, design…), business forums or recruiting groups There were 157 responses, but 20 among of them are invalid since the respondents have not experienced any training activity before December 2018

Thus, after three weeks, in total there has 152 valid responses were received, and the author used that data for the analysis of this paper

3.4 Sample demographics

Table 3.1: Frequency of demographic information of respondents

Number of respondents

Percentage (%)

0 1.3