HR’s role in

developing a positive work environment.

Marie Gasnot, Mengyi Wang, Anni Urpola, Shengqi GU

International human resources

26TH OF MARCH 2019
Group 2-Team 7
Table of content

1.CONTEXT ................................................................................................................................ 3
2. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 5
3. RESEARCH RESULTS ON RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HR AND POSITIVE WORK
ENVIRONMENT ............................................................................................................................. 6
3.1. Why should HR and companies care about developing a positive environment? .................. 6
Human side : Build Trust Happiness at work ...................................................................... 6
Financial side : ....................................................................................................................... 7
3.2.Influence factors of HR in the performance of duties ............................................................. 7
3.3. Why do people think a good working environment is important............................................ 8
4. HR’S ROLE IN BUILDING A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT ......................................................... 10
4.1.Guarantee fairness in the workplace.................................................................................... 10
4.2. Affirm employee value in both financial and non-financial ways .......................................... 10
4.3.Organize and plan activities to enhance team awareness ................................................... 11
4.4.Maintain harmonious interpersonal relationship in the company .......................................... 11
4.5. Maintain transparency and standardization of procedures .................................................. 11
5. CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... 13
6. RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................................................................. 14
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 15

2
1.CONTEXT
The relationships between HR and the work environment, have evolved a lot during the few past
centuries. They evolved with the way to perceive the work, and with the society.

HR ideas came up, during the industrial revolution (1760-1840), but at this time the ideas of Robert
Owen, and Charles Babbage, correlating wellness of the employees and perfect work, are only
ideas.

At end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th the century, the working conditions
were tough and dangerous. Employees didn’t have their word to say in matter of security, or
wellness at work. At this time, people were working to survive, most of them did the job their
parents did, and never asked themselves what they really wanted to work on. In France, even a lot
of children under 13 years old were working in the mines, or working in the fields as farmers
(instead of going to school). Because of productivity, company size(Companies were small, and
the head office was mainly composed from a boss, maybe an accountant, and a secretary. ) and
people's awareness, people's demand for human resources is not strong. There was no proper HR
department, the hiring was much more based on feeling.

It’s at the beginning of the 1930’s that things start to really evolve. Employees start to value their
rights and to understand that they have the power to change their working conditions. Strike after
strike, they earn rights, new laws appear, their works are made more comfortable, safe, and their
working time is limited. It’s the beginning of the real HR departments.

Decade after decade, the employees have won more rights, security, and freedom of speech. They
were more and more invited/ allowed to get involved in the company. But at the end of the 20th
century, the relationships between the HR department and the employees remain complicated. In
most of the companies, employees are just considered as numbers, as a simple “labour input”, and
everything's made to put the employees into competition. For example, companies like Amazon
encourage the competition between their employees, and do nothing to reduce the stress level
inside of the company, their objective is clearly to make more profit as they can, without taking care
of their employees. Amazon’s managers said in an interview that Amazon stays the best place
where they hated to work in. On the other side, the employees, fear the HR department, that they
consider more as a threat than as an allie. They only feel used by the company.

3
But, nowadays, the situation is quite different. This past 15 years, the happiness at work, and the
positive work environment are more and more important. There is a real recognition of the
importance of good vibes at work.

4
2. INTRODUCTION

“Success is not the key to happiness, happiness is the key to

success.”
Albert Schweitzer

This quote defines well nowadays’ mentalities about success at work. Indeed, more and more, the
HR department is responsible for the happiness of the workers and tries to improve the work
environment through different things, and different ways. This is a totally new phenomenon,
happiness at work and developing a positive work environment have never been that important.

The 21th century is probably the most complicated of the centuries humanity has ever known.
There are a lot of new problematics, technology is everywhere, but also ecology, equity, the birth of
a cult of hedonism… : our era is facing a lot of challenges, and contradictions. Businesses and
companies are not excluded from this kind of “mess”. They have to evolve with their time, and take
into consideration what their workers are expecting, in order to keep and attract the talents. This
evolution is very long and difficult, particularly for the big and old companies, which have a lot of
ideas, and premade norms. Why changing a system, which has been working for centuries? On
the contrary, little companies, start-ups, or quite young big companies such as Google invest a lot
in wellness at work, because it’s easier to integrate it in their working structure, and because they
know how beneficent it is to their effectiveness. For example Google allows its employees to spend
20% of their working time on personal stuffs.

With this new “happiness trend”, new jobs come up like “Chief Happiness Officer” (CHO). The
CHO is part of the HR department, and looks for employees’ wellness at work, he is bridge
between the employees and the administration. The birth of this job is a way to give a fresh and
young image of HR department, and to develop the communication inside of the company. It’s
interesting to follow the evolution of the HR department inside of the company, and to understand
its relationships with workers’ happiness.

In this paper, we will adopt literature research method and case analysis method to study HR’s role
in developing a positive work environment and how to develop sense of well-being at work.This will
guide the enterprise when they want to set a positive work environment at work.

5
3. RESEARCH RESULTS ON RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HR
AND POSITIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT

3.1. Why should HR and companies care about developing a positive environment?

Human side : Build Trust Happiness at work

Today’s workforce is increasingly diverse, It’s better to work in a nice atmosphere for everybody.
and organizations need to understand that in order to be competitive. For that reason the
companies which are not promoting policies and practices including and supporting individuals
from all kinds of backgrounds, will be left behind. (Downey, van der Werff, Thomas, K. & Plaut
2015) The concept ‘positive employment relationship’ is based on three important principles. First
of these principles is to accept that employers and employees have both different and shared
interests and to understand that this is essential task of employment relationship is to be able to
manage these different interests. The second of these principles is that there must be high level of
trust among these two parties in order to succeed (Fox 1974). The third one is that people should
feel like they are treated fairly. (Guest 2017)

Downey, van der Werff, Thomas, K. & Plaut (2015) showed in their study that promoting inclusion
in organizations is one important and possible way to increase employee trust and engagement in
organizations. The study suggests that promoting higher levels of inclusion may even be the critical
condition for understanding the benefits of effective diversity practices in the organization.
Organizations that are actively aiming to promote employee inclusions can expect to get well-
established benefits of increased employee performance, effective working relationships and well-
being. Diversity practices have small relationship with trusting climate, but when employees feel
that they are included in the process this relationship is strengthening significantly. (Downey, van
der Werff, Thomas, K. & Plaut 2015)

Thomas and Ely (1996) claimed that the implementation of diversity practices can lead for example
to increased creativity, profitability, flexibility and both individual and organizational growth. In this
study they found that these inclusionary practices are fostering trust relationships in organizations
and for that reason they are also going above and beyond so called traditional recruitment and
equal opportunity employment practices. (Thomas & Ely 1996) Guest (2017) found that training
and development and creating attractive career possibilities can lead to a feeling of security,
development of self-efficacy and well-being. Grant, Christianson and Price (2007) define work-
related well-being as ‘the overall quality of an employee’s experience and functioning at work”.

6
They claim that there are different aspects in work-related well-being. These three aspects are
psychological, physical and social functioning.

Financial side :

Guest (2017) found that external pressures are carrying threats to well-being. According to this
study organisations who are focusing on fell-being are likely to benefit from that by reaching
performance and reduced costs. According to Thomas and Ely (1996) it is possible that
organizations which are trying to increase workplace diversity can cause to tension in organization
among employees and also weaken performance. Tariq, Ramzan and Riaz (2013) found in their
study that different kind of variables can lead to dissatisfaction among employees which also leads
to results in turnover. These kind of variables are for example salary, stress at workplace, workload
and conflicts with family due to job. In other words all of these variables have negative impact on
the performance of the company. (Tariq, Ramzan & Riaz 2013)

Bryson, Forth and Stokes ( 2014) found that there is causal link between collective job satisfaction
and workplace performance. Also Bockerman and Ilmakunnas (2012) got similar results when they
claimed that job satisfaction has a significant impact on organizations productivity. According to
Hoppok and Spielgler (1938) job satisfaction is ‘integrated set of psychological, physiological and
environmental conditions that encourage employees to admit that they are satisfied or happy with
their jobs’. Proudfoot, Corr, Guest and Dunn (2009) showed that cognitive behavioral training can
lead to improved self-efficacy and well-being in general. These two factors together also lead to
both better sales performance and lower labour turnover.

3.2.Influence factors of HR in the performance of duties

In the year 2012，LAURA INNOCENTI, ALESSANDRO M. PELUSO and MASSIMO PILATI

studies the relationship between HR and employee performance, proposing that HR practice plays
a role in improving employees' work attitude, including their affective commitment to the company
and work satisfaction, which is largely implemented and reflected by line manager. Based on
empirical analysis, two-way data of 37 Italian companies at the corporate level and employee level
have been collected in the form of questionnaire. The intended HR practices and managers'
perceived behavioral integrity have been set as Antecedent Variables. Dependent variables are set
to employee commitment and job satisfaction. It is concluded that the higher the degree of trust a
company has in its management, the more employees trust the company and the higher their
emotional commitment and job satisfaction. The time and money invested by the company in HR
7
practice will be positively reported as employee engagement, thus ensuring the competitiveness of
the company and ensuring the positive development of the company. Therefore, such investment
should not be reduced under any circumstances.

In 2018, Alima Aktar and Faizuniah Pangil did the research of the relationship between HR practice
and employee engagement and how corporate culture adjusts it. They used the theory of social
exchange and found that the organizational culture part adjust the relationship between HR
practice and employee engagement. In Bangladesh banking industry, when human resources
management of employees is reflected in pay, job security and working conditions (job security),
employee engagement showed significant positive correlation; In addition, the correlation between
performance appraisal and engagement is not strong, and training and development have not
significantly improved employee engagement. They concluded that the performance evaluation
system and training courses for employees of the banking industry in Bangladesh may be
inadequate.

Since quality-related HR practice has a positive correlation with the cognition of organizational
ethics, and enhancing the cognition of organizational ethics can have a positive impact on work
attitude. In 2013, Sean Valentine, David Hollingworth and Clare A. Francis Studied the proportion
of the influence of organizational ethics cognition on the relationship between HR and work
attitude, making it play a connecting role, so as to improve the working attitude of employees in
enterprises through such human resource practice. His research suggests that the positive impact
of quality-related HR on work attitude depends entirely on the cognition of organizational ethical
employees, the lack of moral and ethical adjustment, human resource's influence on the working
attitude will not be controlled, and may even make staff produce company duplicity illusion on
moral issues, resulting in a negative attitude. He believes companies should enhance ethical
training to ensure intensity of human resources intervention

3.3. Why do people think a good working environment is important

Firstly, the evolution of the society. The societies of the end of the 20th century, and of the 21th
century are more based on happiness and fun, in a global way. The time spent to the
entertainment is huge, and is always growing. Products are sold on the basis that they are funny
to use, untertainment ways are multiplying, and people are always looking for more fun. So, the HR
department, and wider the structure of the company had to evolve with the society, to get adapted
to people and attract them. Or maybe, that the HR department and the companies’ structure
changed, thanks to employees’ mentality. Nevertheless, HR department has been impacted by the
changes of the ways of thinking, and it’s now in a great change and renewment phasis.
8
Secondly, the apparition of high technology. This past years high technology never stopped to
evolve, and to be diffused in the society. Nowadays, almost everybody, has a smartphone, a
computer, the internet, and social networks. Our society faces a plague and a boon : technology is
everywhere and gives everybody the opportunity to raise his voice and give his opinion. The
information is widely broadcasted, everybody can have access to it. But at the same time,
everybody can spread false information and destroy somebody or some company’s reputation.
That’s why companies have now to be very careful about how they take care about their
employees, because if they do anything bad, they can be exposed to everybody’s critics. It
encourages HR department to take care about the employees, because the companies begin to
understand that the employees are a great part of the company’s advertising. A happy worker, will
talk in a good way of its company, and it will attract customers, new talents, and the media will talk
in a positive way of the company. A company has all the interests to invest in the worker’s
happiness.

Thirdly, there the evolution of technology, and the way of thinking in the population are obviously
followed by the development of new HR theories. For example, new concepts appears, like for
example, the concept of “well-being”.

Indeed, by the past, the principle of health was in the center of the HR preoccupations and
regulations. Nowadays, this conception of health has been extended to the concept of well-being,
explained DeSalvo, Bloser, Reynolds, Jiang, & Muntner in 2006 and DeSalvo, Fan, McDonell, &
Fihn, in 2005 : “The perception of well-being and its impact on medical or physical health has been
demonstrated to be a strong indicator of actual health outcomes”. Seligman, Steen, Park &
Peterson, created in 2005, the term of Positive Psychology, appears, considering that pleasure,
engagement and meaning have to be combined to procure happiness and fight mental illnesses.
This is a very important step because it explains the importance of the psychological part in the
work. And if a good psychological condition is linked to the health, it means, that the company has
to consider the psychological side of its employees in a very serious way. It becomes an obligation
to HR department and widely to companies to take care physically and psychologically of their
employees.

9
4. HR’S ROLE IN BUILDING A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT

4.1.Guarantee fairness in the workplace

When the company face to manage their employees, one of the most important things is the
company can do for them, including setting a positive environment for them. And also the positive
or negative environment is the main factor which affects their motivation to work. Undoubtedly,
building a positive environment can bring better results for each company.

In the traditional and existing workplace environment, there are many unfair phenomena, which
lead to a negative working environment and directly affect the efficiency and performance of
employees in their work.Some of these issues have been discussed and even need to be tailored
to balance these conditions. For example, the issue of gender equality has been the cause of the
inefficiency of the workplace environment.

For example, the issue of gender equality has been the cause of the inefficiency of the workplace
environment. Including the male staff and the female staff who have paid the same labor and
achieved the same results, but the male salary is more, the promotion rate is higher, the social
status and the company status are higher, even in this case, male Staff members receive a much
higher promotion rate than female employees. While the human resources department is improving
the working environment, it is necessary to consider gender equality. Although the company may
spend some cost to achieve this goal, such as maternity leave for pregnant women, subsidies for
childbirth, and even parental leave for male employees to take care of their children or accompany
their wives. However, in this case, employee loyalty (especially female employees' loyalty) will be
significantly improved, directly improving the working environment positively, making the employee
satisfaction index and work efficiency increase.

4.2. Affirm employee value in both financial and non-financial ways

HR plays a role in defining the value of employees in changing the working environment.
Traditional companies believe that paying employees' salaries will result in an ideal workforce,
especially in industries that require employees to pay for their physical work. Nowadays, after
some research and human resource management improvement, the company finds that
employees need more than just financial satisfaction. Most of the time, in addition to money, they
need the company and society to affirm their professional value.

Opportunity is a good way to actively improve the working environment. If employees feel that what
they are doing is a dead end, the energy invested by employees in their work will be greatly
reduced. Even employees struggle in this job because they are raising a family or living in society.
10
Then he will only put enough effort into meeting the content of the work, which is unpleasant for
everyone. Although Google's work environment is very good, but there are pressures of
competition caused by too many talents within the company, and there are doubts about political
operation in the middle management of GOOGLE. This phenomenon has caused some employees
to feel that they have no hope of promotion, so they gradually let the overall work performance fall.
On the contrary, if the employee believes that the work he is trying to do is to have the opportunity
to be appreciated by the boss and get promoted, he will feel that he is a valuable and
indispensable employee in the company. The energy and time invested by the staff will rise in a
very spectacular proportion. Even if the company's current capabilities are not enough to pay for
the employee's contribution, the employee will go all out to help the company through this period
and trust the company to give him reasonable treatment in the future. For example, there are many
employees in Amazon who complain that they have been overloaded with the same work as
repetition. Most people don't know their future and prospects.These factors make employees have
many negative influences within the company. After the value of employees' existence is
recognized by the society and the company, their work efficiency and performance will be greatly
improved, and the satisfaction with the work environment will also increase substantially.

4.3.Organize and plan activities to enhance team awareness

Organizing social events and improving hardware within the company is also a good way to directly
improve job satisfaction. The free training course allows the staff of a letter to have more room for
growth. The rich social activities can improve the familiarity of colleagues and facilitate teamwork.
The company's public space allows employees to think more about new ideas, and to eliminate
fatigue and feel a sense of belonging to the company.

4.4.Maintain harmonious interpersonal relationship in the company

Interpersonal relationships are also a very important key to HR's ability to improve the positive
work environment. It includes people who work with employees, such as high-level leaders,
managers, colleagues, and customers. The content is to maintain support, trust, openness, and
flexibility with supervisors and colleagues to create a predictable, consistent, and non-threatening
social system. In this system, employees can safely complete their tasks while paying 100% of
their efforts, without fear of being threatened or even framed by people around them.

4.5. Maintain transparency and standardization of procedures

11
Transparency and standardization of procedures are also critical factors, including work processes,
personnel learning and planning. The company encourages employees to pay more attention to
the company through the formulation, regulation or culture of various policies. For example, a well-
established performance management system allows employees to know what the company is
looking for in this position, and to let employees know that they can get the corresponding rewards
after hard work.

The company's use of standardized operating procedures makes work efficient and simplifies
complex and cumbersome tasks. For example, the electronic tracking system used by Amazon,
from the time the orderer purchases the order on the network to the order of the goods to the
orderer's address, all the programs can be seen on the network.This behavior significantly reduces
the process of customer service personnel handling customer goods, saving a lot of labor costs
and unnecessary trouble.

12
5. CONCLUSION

At present, with the rapid development of human resource management, people have higher and
higher requirements for the working environment. The personnel of human resource department
urgently need to adjust their roles to meet the requirements of employees and help enterprises
develop better. Through the study of the evolution of the relationship between the human
resources department and the working environment of employees and combined with the case
study of Google and amazon, we find out the current role of human resources in dealing with the
working environment, including guaranteeing fairness in the workplace, affirming employee value
in both financial and non-financial ways, organizing and planning activities to enhance team
awareness, maintaining harmonious interpersonal relationship in the company and transparency
and standardization of procedures. In view of the current human resources in the performance of
these responsibilities to face the problem, we conducted an in-depth discussion and gave specific
Suggestions for improvement.

13
6. RECOMMENDATIONS

As participants and communicator in enterprise strategic planning, HR needs to further align

enterprise goals with employee goals. To infect employees with the company's culture. At the
same time HR should ensure the work efficiency of employees while creating a pleasant working
environment and avoid extremes.

Developing an open and transparent policy with employee participated, then conducting public
rewards and proper punishments is a good way to motivate employees. This will not only give
them a proper sense of awe, but also express the company's recognition of their efforts. In this way
they will consider themselves valuable to the company.

HR also needs to organize some activities regularly and invite all employees to participate, so as to
promote the communication between employees in different positions and create beautiful
memories within the company.This helps lay the foundation for a harmonious working environment
for the company.

14
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aktar, A & Pangil, F 2018, ‘The Relationship between Human Resource Management Practices
and Employee Engagement: the Moderating Role of Organizational Culture’, Journal of Knowledge
Globalization, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 55–89, viewed 24 March 2019,

Bryson, A., Forth, J. and Stokes, L. ( 2014). Does Wellbeing Affect Workplace Performance?
London: Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

Downey, S., van der Werff, L., Thomas, K. & Plaut, V. (2015). The role of diversity practices and
inclusion in promoting trust and employee engagement.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45(1), 35-44.

Fox, A. ( 1974). Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations, London: Faber.

Grant, A., Christianson, M. and Price, R. (2007). Happiness, health, or relationships? Managerial
practices and employee well‐being tradeoffs. Academy of Management Executive, 21: 1, 51– 63.

Guest, D. (2017). Human resource management and employee well-being: towards a new analytic
framework. Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), 22-38.

Hoppok, R., & Spielgler (1938). Job Satisfaction. Occupations: The Vocational Guidance Journal,
16(7) ,636-643.

Innocenti, L., Peluso, A. and Pilati, M. (2012) ‘The Interplay Between HR Practices and Perceived
Behavioural Integrity in Determining Positive Employee Outcomes’, Journal of Change
Management, 12(4), pp. 399–415. doi: 10.1080/14697017.2012.728763.

Lewis Sarah (2013) ‘How can I create a positive work environment during cutbacks?’, Strategic HR
Review,(6).doi:10.1108/SHR-05-2013-0054.

Proudfoot, J., Corr, P., Guest, D. & Dunn, P. (2009). Cognitive‐behavioural training to change
attributional style improves employee well‐being, job satisfaction, productivity and turnover.
Personality and Individual Differences, 46: 2, 147– 153.

Tariq, M., Ramzan, M., & Riaz, A. (2013). The Impact of Employee Turnover on The Efficiency of
The Organization.
Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business , 4(9), 700-711.
15
Thomas, D. A., & Ely, R. J. ( 1996). Making differences matter: A new paradigm for managing
diversity. Harvard Business Review, 74, 79– 90.

Valentine, S., Hollingworth, D. and Francis, C. A. (2013) ‘Quality-Related HR Practices,

Organizational Ethics, and Positive Work Attitudes: Implications for HRD’, Human Resource
Development Quarterly, 24(4), pp. 493–523. doi: 10.1002/hrdq.21169.

16