Sustainable Workplace Research Articles

Maintaining a sustainable workplace: Internal Corporate Social Responsibility practices in Dialog Semiconductor during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the vast majority of companies with many difficulties in remaining efficient and profitable, especially whilst keeping their Staff employed. In this article, we focus on the internal aspects of CSR – corporate social responsibility directed toward employees – and show that actions taken in this area at the Dialog Semiconductor company have significantly contributed to providing a sustainable workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the theoretical fundamentals of the concept, this article illustrates the case study containing the activities taken and employee feedback. The results show that the company has successfully managed to maintain sustainable workplaces through actions coherent with the recommendations on HR (Human Resources) management in COVID-19 pandemic.

Assessing the Effect of Perceived Diversity Practices and Psychological Safety on Contextual Performance for Sustainable Workplace

Perceiving discrimination in workplace practices psychologically damages employees and affects their work performance. The current study aims to find differences in perceived diversity practices (i.e., equal representation and developmental opportunities and gender diversity promotion) and the psychological safety of diverse groups in the workplace. Further, the study investigates the relationship of equal representation and developmental opportunities, gender diversity promotion, and psychological safety with employee contextual performance. A sample size of (n = 536) respondents was collected from the private banking sector in India, and was further analyzed using statistical tools, such as factor analysis, correlations, analysis of variance, and regression analysis. The findings indicate differences in gender and tenure diversity regarding “equal representation and development opportunities”, and “gender diversity promotion.” Furthermore, “equal representation and development opportunities,” and “psychological safety” showed a significant negative relationship with the employee contextual performance. Further, no association between perceived “gender diversity promotion” practices and “contextual performance” was found. The novelty of the current research is unlike previous research; the study highlights that excess psychological safety, equality in representation, and development opportunities to have “workforce diversity” make employees aggressively explicit and disengage them from additional work behavior. The findings of the study and application of SPSS software for the analysis of the employee’s perception, behavior, and performance will aid managers and leaders in better decision making for employees; business growth; effective human resource and business management; and for building a healthy, collaborative, and sustainable work environment in the private banks and similar organizations.

Commentary: Laying the Groundwork to Meaningfully Engage Indigenous Leadership

To advance equity, diversity, inclusion and reconciliation, healthcare organizations are increasingly recruiting Indigenous leaders. While it is crucial to involve Indigenous Peoples in solving the problems they experience, serving in these roles presents dilemmas and often harm to the Indigenous incumbents. Non-Indigenous healthcare organizations are encouraged to lay the groundwork for right relations with Indigenous Peoples and sustainable workplaces for Indigenous leadership through understanding and accepting accountability for the problem, getting comfortable with discomfort and being truly prepared for systemic change.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) about Sexual Harassment at Workplace: A Roadmap for Sustainable Workplaces

Globalization, its corollaries -increased female literacy levels and rapid urbanization, has brought a radical change in women worldwide. However, with the more significant influx of women in India's mainstream workforce, sexual harassment at the workplace has assumed more critical dimensions. Assessment of the awareness, attitudes, and perception of colleagues towards the victim, victimization, and the wrongdoer through a KAP research methodology which is meant to be a representative survey of a target population, forms the central focus of the study. The sample size was 512 respondents from public and private sector undertakings. The structured questionnaire consisted of four core sections ranging from including respondent’s socio-demographic characteristics to including questions regarding the assessment of respondents' knowledge of sexual harassment at the workplace and committee to address the issue, their attitudes towards sexual harassment at the workplace, and inquiries about practice towards sexual harassment at workplace. The study affirms, firstly, both public and private sector organizations lack in their rehabilitative approach towards the victim. Secondly, the co-workers' approach both in the private and public sector lacks sensitivity and includes victim-blaming. Thirdly, there is a need for sensitization training of ICC members. Building Safe workplaces is a prerequisite to building sustainable workplaces.

Gender issues in tourism organisations: insights from a two-phased pragmatic systematic literature review

Previous research has underlined gendered labour issues and provided recommendations for organisations to advance gender equality within the tourism and hospitality sector. Yet, little is known about how academic research has been translated into actual practice by tourism organisations. The study provides a pragmatic systematic review to compare tourism academic and grey literature from NGOs and large public tourism companies, with an aim of identifying gaps between academia and industry, and between rhetoric and practice. The analyses of 102 academic and 122 grey literature revealed that both types of literature lack focus on the cultural and individual dimensions of gendering process while explicitly focus on the organising system and developed economies. The review highlights insufficient details of company report and calls for developing concrete regulation or standard to measure and report gender equality practice in tourism. This review contributes to knowledge by charting the development of academic research in real-life situations to achieve equitable and sustainable workplace for both women and men in tourism.

Commentary: Laying the Groundwork to Meaningfully Engage Indigenous Leadership.

To advance equity, diversity, inclusion and reconciliation, healthcare organizations are increasingly recruiting Indigenous leaders. While it is crucial to involve Indigenous Peoples in solving the problems they experience, serving in these roles presents dilemmas and often harm to the Indigenous incumbents. Non-Indigenous healthcare organizations are encouraged to lay the groundwork for right relations with Indigenous Peoples and sustainable workplaces for Indigenous leadership through understanding and accepting accountability for the problem, getting comfortable with discomfort and being truly prepared for systemic change.

Organisational Climate and Pro-environmental Behaviours at Work: The Mediating Role of Personal Norms.

Organisations are currently strongly encouraged to adopt more responsible production patterns aligned with sustainable development goals (SDGs). Pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) in the workplace can strengthen the expected positive impacts of organisations’ environmental performance and engender more sustainable transitions to low-carbon production. Research on PEBs at work is relatively recent, so this field still lacks studies of the role of organisational policies and practices in workers’ adoption of these behaviours and of psychosocial processes that contribute to more sustainable workplaces. The present research examined how perceptions of organisations’ environmental policies and practices (i.e., organisational climate or injunctive norms) and of coworkers’ PEBs (i.e., descriptive norms) affect employees’ self-reported voluntary PEBs. Thogersen’s norm taxonomy model was also applied to address the role of personal norms. Self-commitment to sustainable goals at work can play a fundamental role in workers’ behavioural choices, so this research further investigated whether personal norms mediate the relationship between perceived pro-environmental organisational climate and reported workplace PEBs. To test the proposed model, data were collected on 210 workers from different business sectors, who completed an online questionnaire. The analyses showed that, after controlling for the effects of tenure, education level, and a management position, a pro-environmental organisational climate predicts stronger personal norms and a greater tendency to adopt PEBs at work (adjusted R squared=0.36), providing evidence of complete mediation. Coworkers’ perceived descriptive norms also contribute directly to self-reported PEBs. The discussion of the results focuses on the importance of organisational level initiatives as a way to promote change in individuals’ behaviours, which can have positive consequences for workplaces’ transition to sustainability.

Exploring Challenges and Solutions in Performing Employee Ecological Behaviour for a Sustainable Workplace

Organisations are a fundamental part of challenges and solutions to climate change issues. Therefore, the micro and macro factors influencing employee ecological behaviour (EEB) are a rising interest among researchers. The contemporary concept of EEB has been embraced by many organisations and attracted scholars’ attention worldwide. Nevertheless, studies that explored challenges and solutions for performing EEB at the workplace are scarce. This study explored challenges and solutions in performing EEB at the workplace and focused on qualitative research methodology. The researchers interviewed 24 academicians from five leading green research Malaysian universities. Valuable qualitative data and numerous challenges such as high costs of practising, lack of infrastructure, top management support, environmental attitude, green mindfulness, enforcement, and monitoring were identified as challenges in applying EEB from the interviews. Stringent rules and regulations, monitoring, training programmes, and monetary incentives might be efficient solutions to apply ecological behaviour at workplaces, specifically universities. In conclusion, this study has discovered the challenges and solutions in implementing EEB for a sustainable workplace by interviewing academicians from different departments of selected Malaysian higher educational institutes. Also, poor infrastructure, high cost, and the lack of top management support, environmental attitude, green mindfulness, enforcement, and monitoring were identified as the primary challenges in performing EEB. Additionally, the research also discovered significant suggestions to resolve the challenges when implementing EEB at the workplace, such as strict rules and regulations, training programmes, incentives, monitoring, and communicating change and campaigns. Therefore, the stakeholders related to the industry should be concerned with the challenges identified when applying EEB at the workplace to apply the solutions generated from the study.

Sustainable Workplace: Impact of Authentic Leadership on Change-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior and the Moderating Role of Perceived Employees’ Calling

To be sustainable in the current rapidly changing business environment, organizations must strive to adapt and respond to a new environment. Employees are the key performers of organizational change. Furthermore, change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is essential for them to positively accept and implement organizational change. Additionally, the leader’s role is crucial to promoting such change-oriented OCB. In this regard, this study investigates the effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB, demonstrating that the vocational calling of employees strengthens such positive influences. Based on the self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines that the moderating effect between authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB increases when employees have a higher perception of calling for work than lower. This study uses a two-wave data set gathered from 485 currently working employees in South Korea. The empirical analysis is revealed below. First, authentic leadership has a positive effect on direct OCB. Second, employees’ perception of calling has a positive effect on direct change-oriented OCB. Third, the higher the level of employees’ perception of calling, the greater the effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB. The most significant theoretical contribution of the study is that it is the first to determine that calling acts as a moderating factor between authentic leadership and change-oriented OCB. The fact that the positive effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB increases when there is a high calling implies that employees are more likely to conduct change-oriented OCB when they perceive a high level of calling. Based on this result, this study explains the method and reason for maximizing change-oriented OCB through authentic leadership.

Radical Knowledge Management: Using Lessons Learned From Artists to Create Sustainable Workplaces.

This study weaves together research that has been published over the last 20 years and creates a narrative about how we can change our organisations so that they are fit-for-purpose in the 21st century. Using knowledge management as the starting point, the question “How do we move forward in a sustainable, holistic way to create organisations that are healthy and balanced among social, environmental, and financial performance (triple bottom line)?” needs to be answered. This brand new form of knowledge management is called radical knowledge management (radical KM).

Generating health and safety knowledge for innovative and sustainable workplaces: a PEROSH Perspective

PEROSH is the Partnership for European Research in Occupational Safety and Health (OSH).The PEROSH vision is that policymakers, workplaces and other stakeholders across Europe areinspired by and use knowledge generated by PEROSH in their efforts to develop innovativeand sustainable workplaces which are healthy and safe. PEROSH comprises 14 nationalresearch institutes from 13 countries on the continent of Europe. Each institute plays a keynational role through their affiliation to government, health and accident insurance systems,or industry and trade unions. The partnership acts collectively to: strengthen cooperation onOSH research and accelerate the generation of knowledge in key areas of OSH; anddisseminate and exchange knowledge and information on OSH issues. In 2019, TheInternational Labour Organization identified that PEROSH has “strong national and regional[European] policy impact”. This paper gives an overview of PEROSH: an introduction to itshistory and strategy; governance and structure; and core activities including the PEROSH JointResearch Programme and the PEROSH international Wellbeing at Work conference series. Itsummarises PEROSH outreach and networking activities at national, European and globallevel. The paper concludes with reflections on the importance of robust scientific evidence tounderpin and inform the actions of stakeholders for a sustainable world of work which ishealthy and safe.

Burnout among Direct-Care Workers in Nursing Homes during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spain: A Preventive and Educational Focus for Sustainable Workplaces

Due to their continuous contact with pain and death, healthcare workers have one of the most stressful professions. Pain and death are more common in nursing homes. During the health crisis associated with COVID-19, these work centers have been characterized as spaces of high vulnerability to infection for the elderly, with a high mortality rate. This research aims to determine how the health crisis associated with COVID-19 has influenced healthcare professionals working in nursing homes for the elderly. Using a quantitative and cross-sectional method, the research was developed in residential centers in the Region of Murcia (Spain) during the second wave of the pandemic. A survey design based mainly on the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was employed. MBI measures three subscales: emotional burnout, depersonalization, and self-fulfillment. The results show that 6.4% of the respondents were burned out, 53.8% of the participants were emotionally exhausted, 35.1% were found to suffer from depersonalization, and in the case of personal development, the respondents showed a low level of 15.6%. This study shows the need to consider the establishment, in the academic environment, of training programs for health professionals related to coping with, managing, and identifying stress, especially in adverse circumstances. Similarly, in the professional field, it is necessary to develop strategies to prevent stress and anxiety in the workplace. The development of training programs for this purpose is essential for achieving a sustainable work context.

Responding to the climate emergency: how are UK universities establishing sustainable workplace routines for flying and food?

ABSTRACT Scope 3 emissions from the UK higher education sector are globally significant, and long-distance air travel and catering are particularly emissions-intensive aspects of workplace routine. They each present complex problems, as transition to low-carbon alternatives requires the reconfiguration of professional practices. This paper examines the sustainability policies of 66 UK universities to establish the extent to which planning and action in these areas are commensurate with climate emergency declarations. The findings indicate that universities recognize their role in creating demand for long-distance travel and sustaining high-carbon diets. However, few have specific emissions reduction targets or action plans that would rapidly and substantially reduce emissions in these areas. Discussion focuses on two core points; first, how greater cohesion in reporting and target-setting can be achieved across the sector to raise the ambition of targets and intervention; and second to identify opportunities for institutions to disrupt and reshape professional practices to reduce emissions in these areas. Key Policy Insights Reducing emissions in the higher education sector requires organizations to foster low-carbon academic practices by engaging with the systemic cultural and material conditions that support high-carbon academic practices. The establishment of robust targets, action plans and monitoring processes would further support sector-wide decarbonization, and require consensus across HE institutions and governing bodies. Sector-wide agreement on the level and pace of emissions reduction will help to accelerate ambition regarding Scope 3 emissions reduction and determining the appropriate contribution of different institutions will help identify where action is most urgently required. Findings suggest a need for absolute targets for emissions reduction associated with long-distance travel, and that food policies focus on achieving a volumetric reduction in the weight of meat served so that absolute levels of greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. Travel and food provision are complex aspects of university emissions, but a climate emergency framing requires all organizations to use their full range of influence to rapidly and substantially reduce emissions.

CSR as a Potential Motivator to Shape Employees’ View towards Nature for a Sustainable Workplace Environment

Prior studies in the contemporary literature have largely ignored the important role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in shaping employees’ views of self and nature. Although researchers have recently started to pay considerable attention to explore the link between CSR and environmental sustainability, determining how CSR can be effective in shaping the proenvironmental behavior of employees that is missing in the existing literature. The objective of the present research study is to test the impact of microlevel CSR activities to induce environmental performance of an organization with a mediating effect of employees’ pro-environmental behaviors. This study argues that CSR activities of an organization motivate the workers to rethink the relationship between self and nature; hence, they are encouraged to participate in activities that are helpful in terms of preserving the environment, such as participating in pro-environmental activities at the workplace. The proposed model of the study was tested in the banking sector of Pakistan and analyzed by using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique in AMOS software. The results revealed that microlevel CSR activities, using employee proenvironmental behaviors as a mediator, directly and indirectly influence environmental performance of a bank. The results of the present study are helpful for policymakers of different banking institutions to understand how they can reduce the environmental footprint of their bank by using a well-planned CSR program that can induce transcendent emotions in employees to create a sustainable environment.

Human Capital in Azerbaijan: Building Competitive Workforce Capacity for Industry 4.0

Human capital is one of the country’s most significant economic metrics. Today, of course, the advancement of technology, the production of inventions, is a result of the human brain. It, in effect, naturally happens in countries with highly evolved human capital. This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue priorities of human capital development in Azerbaijan during the industrial revolution. The main purpose of the research is to identify and encourage the improvements in Industry 4.0 in Azerbaijan that would be essential for human capital, as well as to suggest a sustainable workplace outlook for current manufacturing businesses during the modern industrial revolution. The relevance of this scientific problem decision is that given the formation of new mechanisms of development on the eve of the 4th Industrial Revolution, these factors also have an impact on the development of human capital. Because the emergence of new professions during the 4th industrial revolution makes it necessary to form human capital in accordance with these professions. Investigation of the topic in the paper is carried out in the following logical sequence: introducton, literature review, research methodology, empirical findings and conclusions. We used some indicators expressed in the 2008-2017 Global Competitiveness Report of the Azerbaijan World Economic Forum to assess the findings. The object of research is the chosen country is Azerbaijan, because namely here, the development of human capital is one of the main goals of public policy. The paper presents the results of an empirical analysis regression, which showed that regression outcomes show that independent variables can explain 63.2 percent of the heterogeneity in higher education and training in Azerbaijan. Calculations of parameters indicate that any change of 1 percent in the independent variable will increase by 0.341 percent. The results of the study suggest that progressive reforms in Azerbaijan’s higher education and training have had a major effect. To meet the requirements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, spending on human capital must be increased. The results of the research can be useful for in the direction of formation of competitive human capital and creation of modern innovation space in the coming years.

Organizational Happiness Dimensions as a Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals: A Prospective Study in Higher Education Institutions in Chile, Colombia and Spain

The aim of this study is to reveal the perception of current and future organizational happiness in the context of higher education institutions (HEIs) in a cross-national study, to reveal exploratory scenarios supporting the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Six dimensions of organizational happiness were considered for this study: Meaning, reliable relationships, positive emotions, engagement, achievement and recognition, and personal and professional development. To do so, Delphi methodology was used. An online survey was addressed to academics and support staff from three HEIs in different countries (Chile, Colombia and Spain), whose answers were analyzed using the Approximation of Qualitative Profiles mathematical technique. The results of this analysis show that there is a favorable prospective for happy workplaces, in all the dimensions for all countries. The implications of this research will serve HEIs’ human management practitioners to formulate effective policies for sustainable workplaces based on organizational happiness.

An Integrative and Sustainable Workplace Mobility Plan: The Case Study of Navantia-Cartagena (Spain)

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have been the strategic aims of many interventions in society recently. Navantia has developed a Sustainable Workplace Mobility Plan motivated by Sustainable Development Goal 11, Sustainable cities. Navantia is a leading Spanish company in the design and construction of high technology military and civilian vessels. This project is focused on the Navantia facilities in Cartagena. A workplace mobility plan has been developed to encourage sustainable mobility, promoting access on foot, by bike, by scooter, and using public transport to travel to and from the company’s facilities. The methodology used is based on the European Guidelines for developing and implementing a sustainable urban mobility plan. Thus, the current accesses and their mobility characteristics have been studied in detail, and surveys have been conducted among the company’s employees. A diagnosis of the situation has been elaborated. To solve the identified problems, three sets of measures have been developed: (i) improved access measures; (ii) management of car park areas; and (iii) soft measures. The economic cost of all these measures has been estimated, as well as the related carbon savings. As a result, a complete sustainable workplace mobility plan has been designed from an integrated point of view to encourage sustainable mobility, not only for the company’s employees but also for all the inhabitants of Cartagena, to transform the city into a place with good quality of life now and in the future. This practical case can serve as a reference for other companies that want to foster sustainable mobility among their employees, even when they are subject to urban constraints.

Assessing the effects of workforce diversity on project productivity performance for sustainable workplace in the construction industry

AbstractRecent studies on workforce diversity have preached that workforce diversity could have a positive impact on productivity if it is managed and utilized well. Due to the global trend of increasing workforce diversity in construction projects, it is crucial to understand the factors affecting workforce diversity and their impact on productivity for developing a sustainable environment for workforce diversity. However, little attention has been given to how workforce diversity may affect productivity performance in the construction industry. Thus, this study aims to assess the impact of workforce diversity on project productivity performance (PPP). Twenty‐one diversity factors were identified via literature review and validated by industry experts, followed by a survey conducted with 58 firms working in Singapore. The responses were analyzed and used to develop a partial least squares structural equation model. The outcomes from the model signified that the diversity aspects such as efficient decision‐making and countering the issue of skilled labor shortages had the highest impact in their respective categories of “Skill and education” and “Age and experience.” Therefore, this study contributes to the core body of knowledge and practice both in defining workforce diversity factors and in assessing the relationship between diversity factors and productivity. Furthermore, feasible strategies that match the factors prioritized by the level of the impact on PPP were proposed. These can help construction organizations to understand the untapped potential of workforce diversity and its impact on PPP, ultimately enhancing the productivity of the industry and sustainable diversity in the workplace.

Adopting Agile Project Management Practices in Non-Software SMEs: A Case Study of a Slovenian Medium-Sized Manufacturing Company

In today’s highly dynamic and unpredictable project environment, companies need to be able to manage changes quickly and effectively, otherwise, the final product will not be current and will only go to waste. Traditional project management approaches that focus on planning are no longer efficient and companies are forced to adopt new ways of working. As a result, more flexible agile project management (APM) approaches have emerged over the last decades. Originally developed for the software industry, APM is now increasingly recognized and adopted also by other industry sectors. However, due to some discipline-specific differences, the adoption of APM by non-software companies is challenging and requires many adjustments and high financial input. While the larger organizations have sufficient resources to make such a transition, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generally cannot afford to do so, and therefore need alternative strategies to increase their agility and stay competitive on the global market. In this paper, we present a case study of a Slovenian medium-sized manufacturing company that implemented only certain APM practices separately and not as part of a structured APM methodology, and still managed to achieve significant benefits: improved communication, faster detection of discrepancies, more effective problem-solving and greater flexibility. The results also suggest that APM practices, even when implemented separately, positively impact project success in terms of both efficiency and stakeholder satisfaction, and can thus help in establishing an economically, socially, and environmentally more sustainable workplace.

Sustainable Workplace in Kyoto – ‘Kyo-sei’ in Society 5.0

At Takenaka Studio in Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), as a design workshop of the faculty of Architecture and Sustainable Design, I selected the area in the middle of Kyoto, Japan for the projects to design today’s ‘sustainable workplaces’. While examining the current situation of the city as well as the urban structure and context from old age, the students gave forms to a space to work/live together in Kyoto of today and proposed several new ways of co-working/living in Society 5.0, where the co-existence of diversified population is essential and we’ve tried to achieve not only SDGs 11: Sustainable cities, but also 3: Well-being for all ages as well as 9: Resilient infrastructure for fostering innovation.