The Effect of Perceived Organizational Support on Employee Engagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Study in Vietnam

Abstract

Employee engagement at workplace is very important for organizations, however, the motivators to keep the employees engaged vary. It has been normally observed that personality and job satisfaction has been the main causes which can motivate employees. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a lot of changes, and the main aim of this study is to analyze the determinants of employee engagement during Covid-19 pandemic with the mediating role of Perceived organizational support and Perceived family support. Through a survey instrument, data was collected from 216 employees working at corporate offices in Hanoi, Vietnam. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to test the study hypotheses using Smart-PLS. The study underlined the significant positive effect of Perceived Organizational support and Perceived Family Support on Employee Engagement. Moreover, Employee engagement also measures the indirect effects from factors such as colleague support, supervisor support, organizational support, spousal support and family members supports on Employee Engagement. Some discussions are given based on the findings of this research in comparison with findings of prior studies in different contexts. This research is evidenced in the emerging countries and Vietnam as the case study.

1. Introduction

Work is fundamental and centrally related to a person’s quality of life. Satisfaction with one’s work has been associated with overall life satisfaction extending the experience of work beyond the physical boundaries of the workplace (Saari & Judge, 1996). Thus, work is more than simply a place to earn a living; it is where employees find personal “meaning, stability, and a sense of community and identity” (Shuck & Wollard, 2008). In addition, in order to maintain the competitiveness and continue attaining success, organizations need to adjust themselves swiftly to a dynamic environment and also permit their employees to thrive in the workplace (Irman et al., 2020). Many studies have underlined the significance of work related support or organizational support and the non-work related support or family/social support in enhancing the work commitment and work performance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused many changes in the society which people are experiencing for the first time in their lives. Apart from causing a lot of trouble to people in various ways, it has also pushed the world into recession. According to Nicola et.al. (2020) the economic situation of the whole world will be worse than the financial crisis of 2008. Fannah et al. (2020) and Prasad and Prasad (2020) have reported that the fight against COVID-19 is ongoing and will require a great deal more effort and coordination through local and global initiatives. Hence, according to Butler (2020), it is clear that the outbreak will have a lasting impact on healthcare investments and delivery models for many years to come. In the present, the business situation during COVID-19 pandemic, the employee engagement has become one of the utmost prominent primacies for human resource managers and practitioners in organization due to lockdown (Chanana, 2020).

In Vietnam, the number of patients with COVID-19 is not as high as other countries and the spread of the virus has been strictly controlled by the efforts of the government, and till now no one has died directly for COVID-19 virus. In order to get the target of limiting the death for people, government has implemented strict quarantine and lockdown situation throughout the country and some specific cities in some periods. In 2020, Vietnam had two periods of one month length lockdown that required all people to stay at home as well as work from home. Although, COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam, has now been controlled (Small and Blanc, 2020) and not as serious as last year but the work–from–home has been applied in many companies in the “New normal situation”. The work from home has helped employees and organizations continue with their work and operations doing the strict lockdown imposed by the government, apart from the work, people have been able to keep safe during these difficult times. However, due to troubles happening at home such as conflicts with spouse and other family members, the performance and productivity have been low. The parenting stress: well-being and housework sharing have put the employees in stressful situation to balance the work and life during “New normal situation”. Therefore, the support and sharing by family members and partners play a vital role in helping officers complete their work with higher performance and effectively contribute to the operation of their companies at large. Besides, as discussed in literature, the supports of organization such as supervisors and colleagues also help the staff maintain their work commitment and performance.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Employee Engagement

There have been numerous definitions of engagement which emerged about two decades ago and it is derived from the practice and research (Simpson, 2009). In addition, Albrecht et al. (2015) stated that there is no consensus on what it means as well as its characteristics. As Macey and Schneider (2008) the notion of employee engagement is a relatively new one that has been heavily marketed by human resource consulting firms. The consulting firms offer human resource consultations for enterprises to enhance the employee performance and productivity by tightening the relationship between staff and enterprises. The academic researchers are slowly joining the fray by examining the engagement as the consequence of employee satisfaction.

Engagement as a concept was first introduced in a study by Kahn in 1990 to explain how people engaged or disengaged at workplace rather than the employee engagement. Kahn (1990) suggested that engagement is the personal expression of self-in-role. He described it as the “harnessing of organizational members’ selves to their work roles: in engagement people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances”. Following this explanation, Schaufeli et al. (2002) defined engagement as “A positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption”. By the concept of Schaufeli et al. (2002), employee engagement consists of three manifest variables including (i) Vigor (high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in one’s work and persistence even in the face of difficulties); (ii) Dedication refers to being strongly involved in one’s work and experiencing a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride and challenge) and Absorption. It is characterized by being fully focused and happily engrossed in one’s work whereby time passes quickly and one has difficulties with detaching oneself from work (Bridger, 2014).

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIDP), in their work with the Kingston Employee Engagement Consortium define employee engagement as “being positively present during the performance of work by willingly contributing intellectual effort, experiencing positive emotions and meaningful connections to others’”. When discussing this definition, Alfes et al. (2010) identified three key dimensions of employee engagement as: (i) intellectual engagement in which an employee hardly thinks about the job and how to do it better; (ii) the effective engagement is when the employee focusses on the positive feelings about doing good job and (iii) social engagement is actively taking opportunities to discuss work-related improvements with others at work.

2.2. Perceived Organizational Support

Organizational support theory proposes that employees form a generalized perception concerning the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being (Eisenberger & Stinglhamber, 2011). The perceived organizational support (POS) refers to the organization’s intent behind their receipts of favorable or unfavorable treatment (Kurtessis et al., 2015). In other words, perceived organizational support embodies the employees’ attitudes that lead to a good relationship between employees and organization (Chiang & Hsieh, 2012), Amir and Mangundjaya (2021) and Eisenberger et al. (2016) define the perceived organizational support as an overall employee belief about the extent to which organizations value their contribution and care about their well-being. In detail, there are three pleasant treatments from organizations that could improve the perceived organizational support such as the organizational rewards, the conditions of work and support from supervisors and fairness. Sitorus (2017) examined the relationship between organizational support and employee behavior within the organization and showed the strong direct impact between them. It is a widely held view that employee engagement is significant ordinal outcome of perceived organizational support (Shams et al., 2020). Chaing and Hsieh (2012) reported the strong positive impact of organizational support on the working performance of staff and somehow creating the work commitment. The study of Ariani (2015), Li et al. (2020). Hermawan et al. (2020) provided analytical evidence to prove the direct contribution of supervisor support on the overall perceived organizational support. Colleague support or co-worker support can also impact the organizational outcomes and the perceived organizational support (Kumar & Sia, 2012; Lianto et al., 2018; Siswanto, et al., 2021). Thus we have the following hypotheses:

H1: There is significant effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on Employee engagement (EE).

H2: There is significant effect of supervisor support (SS) on perceived organizational support (POS).

H3: There is significant effect of colleague support on perceived organizational support (POS).

2.3. Perceived Family Support

Family plays an important role in people’s lives regardless of the difference of nationality, race and culture. It has been noted in numerous of studies. The Familismo (familism) is the term which is used to describe the importance of extended family ties in Latino culture as well as the strong identification and attachment of individuals with their families (Triandis et al., 1984). The perceived family support (PFS) proposed by Martin (1992) and continuously developed by other scholars with the core meaning of supports from family in general, the spouse support and other family members including children, parents and relatives in specific.

Seligman (2002) discussed the relationship between family support and well-being and other psychological variables. Byron (2005)’s study found the strong impact of family support and family stress on the employee’s work in terms of the work-family support. Aryee et al. (1999) introduced the measure to examine role of perceived family support with two dimensions: the support from spouse and the support from other family members on the employee’s work engagement.

H4: There is a significant effect of perceived organizational support (PFS) on Employee Engagement (EE).

H5: There is significant effect of spousal support (SPoS) on perceived family support (PFS).

H6: There is significant effect of family member support (FmS) on perceived family support (PFS).

3. Research Methodology

This study attempts to identify the influential factors concerned with the perceived organizational supports and perceived family supports on the employee engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the married employees tend to have more serious troubles than the single ones. In this specific study, we have only surveyed the married staff rather than all the employees. In order to conduct the survey, we co-operated with Hanoi SME association to do surveying with employees working in their members. Primary data was collected from the different corporate offices in Hanoi for 4 months form June 2020 to the end of September 2020. The online quantitative questionnaire was delivered to employees of 20 random SEMs based on the email list provided by the human resource departments. The structured questionnaire consisted of seven constructs and forty-five 5 points Likert scale items that adopted from previous studies. The demographical variables such as age, gender, tenure was used to be moderating variables.

A pre-test of questionnaire was conducted in June 2020 during the high peak of COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam with 30 experienced employees at various levels within the enterprises. After collecting the pre-test data, the questionnaire was edited and adjusted to fit with the real condition. The collected data was analyzed Smart PLS program.

3.1. Data Collection

The total population of this study is employees working for private small and medium enterprises in Hanoi city. There are approximately over 300.000 people working at enterprise offices. There were 300 participants across the city region who were invited to participate in this study with an average of 10 employees per enterprise. After elimination of cases having incomplete data and outliners, the final sample had 206 valid sampling units with a total response rate of 68.6%.

Table 1 provides the demographical profile of the respondents. There is a higher percentage of female (59.7%) respondents who participated in the study; the majority of respondents were aged from 23–35 and 36–45 with 47.6% and 35.0% respectively. The results of descriptive statistics also indicated that respondents belonged to various work tenure groups as 17.5% (less than 2 years working experience); 43.2% (from 2–5 years working experience and 39.3% (more than 5 years working experience).

Table 1: Demographical Profile of the Respondents (n = 206)

3.2. Measurements

This study employed seven five-point Liker scale including: (1) Employee engagement; (2) perceived organizational support; (3) perceived family supports; (4) colleague support, (5) Supervisor support; (6) Spousal support and (8) Family member’s support.

Employee engagement (EE): The 7-point Likert scale of Utrecht Work Engagement Scales developed by Schaufeli et al. (2002) was adopted to measure respondents’ work engagement. Adopting and adapting by various researchers around the world, this scale has been most popular work engagement measurement tool yet discovered. According to Schaufeli et al. (2006), work engagement refers to a positive fulfilling, work-related state of mind which is characterized by three-factors: vigor, dedication, and absorption.

Perceived organizational support (POS) and Perceived family supports (PFS): Developed and edited by Henderson and Argyle (1985); Rhoades & Eisenberger (2002), Harter et al. (2003) these constructs measure the employee’s perception of organization’s instrumental support in their development and well-being. Along with these types of support these construct also examine the perception of respondents on three different approaches as emotional, instrumental and appraisal support (Ferris et al., 2009).

Colleague support (CS): Aryee et al. (1999) used this construct to measure the degree to which colleagues provide emotional, informational, and instrumental and appraisal support. This scale consists of three subscales such as: emotional, instrumental and appraisal support. This scale has been adopted, adapted and used by various studies of understanding colleague support at work including Harter et al. (2003).

Supervisor support (SPS): Developed by the National Changing Workforce, this construct is used to measure the level of concerted effort given to help the employee accommodate his or her work (Green et al. 2002). Besides, Martin (2013) added some elements which considers the supervisor supports for work is the construct which measures the extent to which managers or supervisor understand their employee’s need for balance between work and family.

Spousal support (SPOS) and Family members’ support (FmS): The scales measuring construct of family support has been developed by Ayree (1999) and Frone & Yardley (1996). Besides, Crnic & Greenberg, (1990) also introduced the Parenting Daily Hassles Scale (PDH). The original scale did not examine the role of spouse and include spouse under the umbrella of the whole family. However, in the reality of Asian countries, spouse play a vital role in supporting their partner both in the housework and office work. So, we divide the Family support into two different dimensions: the spousal support and family members’ support. The spousal support scale was adopted from Martin (2013).

This study employed the Smart PLS to conduct descriptive statistics and inferential statistical techniques as: Factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to identify the influential factors that may affect the employee engagement during COVID-19 pandemic. In terms of analysis, Andersen and Kheam (1988) stated that PLS-SEM is a two-step process involving assessment of the measurement and structural model. First, the measurement model was assessed by examining the Cronbach’s Anpha (CA), internal composite reliability (CR), convergent validity (CV) and discriminant validity (DV) (Hair et al., 2017).

4. Research Results

This research is conducted by applying PLS-SEM technique for development of theoretical model and consequently the findings and the interpretation among the variables have been conducted accordingly. The data analysis was performed by SmartPLS 3.3.3. According to Urbach & Ahlemann (2010), PLS-SEM can be applied to the analysis of non-normally distributed data, and it does not demand a large sample size, and serves the purposes of exploratory study rather than theory testing. Besides, Worthington & Whittaker (2006) argued that PLS-SEM is more suitable than CB-SEM for theory development in the case of the number of valid cases are fewer than the minimum required sample size, which is 300. Thus, with the number of only 206 valid cases, the use of PLS-SEM is proper in this specific study. Along with the instruction of conducting and reporting PLS-SEM analysis (Hair et al., 2019) suggested 2 main steps: (i) evaluation of the measurement models and (ii) the structural model.

4.1. Measurement Models

In order to satisfy convergent validity, indicator outer loading should exceed 0.70 and both indicator reliability and average variance extracted (AVE) should be higher than 0.50. Discriminant validity was assessed by the Fornell–Larcker criterion and cross-loadings. The square root of AVE of each latent construct should be higher than the correlations with other latent constructs based on the Fornell–Larcker criterion. In addition, an indicator’s outer loading on the associated construct should be higher than its cross loadings with all other constructs. Composite reliability and Cronbach’s alphas between 0.60 and 0.70 indicate acceptable internal consistency in exploratory research, with values between 0.70 and 0.90 indicating satisfactory to good reliability (Hair et al., 2019).

From the analysis result (Table 2), it was found that the Employee engagement construct would be reliable and valid after deleting one item (EE8) with the outer loadings equal to or less than 0.07. The perceived organizational support has two deleted items (POS1, POS2) and perceived family support construct has two deleted items (PFS6, PFS7). All of the rest 38 items have satisfactory levels of convergent validity and reliability with outer loadings >0.70 (significant); indicator reliability >0.50 (good) and AVE > 0.50 (acceptable). The composite reliability and CR value of 7 determinants have range from 0.814 to 0.917. The EE met the evaluation criteria of discriminant validity based on the Fornell–Larcker criterion and higher outer loadings, eight factors showed the different from each other and no construct is represented by other constructs in the model (see Figure 1).

Table 2: Internal Consistency Reliability and Convergent Validity

Note: All item loadings are significant at 0.001 (p < 0.001). CA: Cronbach’s Alpha, AVE: Average variance extracted, CR: composite reliability. EE8, PFS6, PFS7, POS1, POS2 deleted due to low factor loadings.

Figure 1: Measurement Model

To depict the extent to which a construct is truly distinct from other constructs by empirical standards. (Hair et al., 2017) suggested the discriminant validity. Henseler et al. (2015) suggested the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) approach to determine the discriminant validity of the constructs. In order to achieve the discriminant validity, the HTMT value should not be greater than the HTMT.85 value of 0.85, or the HTMT.90 value of 0.90 (Gold et al., 2001). Moreover, Fornell and Lacker (1981) stated that for each variable, the square roots of the AVE should be greater than any of the correlations involving the said variable. Therefore, this study uses the square roots of AVE coefficients to measure the validity of constructs. Table 3 indicates that the measures used in this research have discriminant validity.

Table 3: Discriminant Validity

To examine the multicollinearity, study uses the Variance Inflation factors (VIF). A VIF value greater than 5 indicates the multicollinearity (Hair et al., 2014). The analysis results show that the lowest VIF value is 1.494 and the highest value is 2.995 lower than 5 that indicating no multicollinearity issue.

4.2. Structural models

Structural model was assessed to test the three causal relationships: (i) between perceived organizational support, perceived family support and employee engagement; (ii) between perceived organizational support and colleague support, supervisor support and (iii) between perceived family support and the spousal support and family members’ support.

Hair et. al. (2014) stated the coefficient of determination (R² values) and path coefficient (β values) were parameters to determine how well the data supported the hypothesized relationships. A bootstrapping process with 5000 interactions was performed to generate t-values and standard errors to confirm the statistical significance. In which, according to Ang et al. (2015), R² is used to measure the predictive accuracy of the model by Gronemus et.al. (2010), R² represents the percentage of variance in the dependent variables as explained by the independent variables in the model (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Structural Model

The path coefficients (β values) indicate the degree of change in the dependent variable for each independent variable (Gronemus et al., 2010). Along with R², the effect size (f²) and predictive relevance (q²) for each path can be considered as weak to large effect (Hair et al., 2017). The effect size f² measures the changes in R² when a specific exogenous variable is excluded from the model and evaluate whether substantial changes occur in the endogenous latent variable. Cohen (1988) gives the guidelines to assess the f² whereby 0.02, 0.15 and 0.35 indicate small, medium and large effects, respectively. Hair et al. (2014) suggested using the Blindfolding (a sample reuse technique that omits every dth data point in the indicators of the endogenous constructs) to assess the q² – predictive relevance. The q² value larger than 0 indicates that model has predictive relevance for a certain dependent construct (Akter et.al., 2011). Moreover, the model fit was assessed by using SRMR. Due to Hair et al. (2016) the SRMR value below 0.10 indicating the acceptable model fit.

Table 4 shows that the path coefficients for all relationships were statistically significant due to all p values <0.05; whereas all β values are positive, therefore H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 are supported. However, the f² values in Table 4 show the large impacts of Family members’ support on perceived family support (f² = 0.380); the medium to large impacts of perceived organizational support on Employee Engagement (f² = 0.238) and Supervisor support on perceived organizational support (f² = 0.217) and Spousal support on perceived family support (f² = 0.188). Other f² have range from 0.035 to 0.120, that although having positive relationships but the impacts are quite small.

Table 4: Hypotheses Testing

As shown in Table 5, the perceived family support and perceived organizational support can be explained around 34.2% of variance explained of the employee engagement (R² = 0.342), whereas 54.8% of variance of perceived organizational support explained by the colleague support and supervisor support (R² = 0.548). In addition, 55.0% variance for perceived family support was explained by the spousal support and family members’ support (R² = 0.550). Moreover, the three R² values are over 0.1, thus the predictive capability is established. In order to assess the predictive relevance, we examine the q² values. The results show that all q² values of 0.213, 0.374 and 0.372 exceed 0 representing that the employee engagement, perceived organizational support and the perceived family support demonstrating acceptable predictive relevance. In addition, the SRMR value is 0.067 < 0.10 that indicates the acceptable model fit.

Table 5: R², q², SMRM

5. Discussion and Conclusion

This study utilized PLS-SEM to investigate the relationships of seven variables of employee engagement, perceived family support and perceived organizational support, colleague support, supervisor support, spousal support and family members’ support. The results show that perceived family support and perceived organizational support both have positive significant effect on work engagement among the corporate officers (H1, H4). The results support the findings of Caesen and Stinglhamber (2014), Kose (2016), and Ayman & Antani (2008) who reported that employees who feel that they have a high degree of organizational support and perceived family support, tend to be more motivated at workplace. They have positive attitudes and behaviors and are better committed to their work than other employee who feel that they are less supported by their families and their organizations. However, the f² (effect size) of the perceived family support on the employee engagement in COVID-19 pandemic is quite small that lead to the different point of view with previous studies which emphasize the role of family based support on the overall employee engagement. It may be explained that although having the support from spouse and family members is good, but the main concern of the corporate officers is the perceived organizational support.

Regarding the indirect effect, the structured model confirmed other relationships such as that of colleague support and supervisor support have positive influence on perceived organizational support (H2, H3). The findings support the previous studies of Ladd & Henry (2000), Odle-Dusseau et al. (2007) who reported that high levels of colleague support and supervisor support lead to high level of employee’s perception towards these supports and they feel more engaged with their work. Specifically, among two kinds of support, the supervisor support plays the most important role, than the colleague support. This is quite correct with the real situation in Asian working culture where the lower staff tend to follow and wait for the detailed instruction and support from the upper-level managers.

The current study also reveals that spouse and family members having positive impacts on perceived family support (H5, H6). This type of support motivates the employee and leads to energetic and enthusiastic perception. The results support studies of Parkes & Langford (2008), Antani and Ayman (2004), Odle-Dusseau et al. (2016). Between the family members’ support and the spousal support, the family members have larger effect than the spouse. In many studies, work-family conflict and family troubles have been identified as the main causes of the employee disengagement. Especially, the misunderstanding and parental mindfulness seem to be not easily solved in the COVID-19 pandemic situation.

There are some managerial implications that firms need to put in serious consideration to the organizational support especially in the view of the wide spreading situation of COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the employees themselves also have to focus on family support with the main aim of retaining the engagement with their work, regardless of the trouble and the worries of work from home and lock down issues.