Abstract
Employee happiness is multifaceted, essential, and demands the application of accurate strategic options depending on organizational needs to derive its performance benefits. The current global needs have transformed employees from people who seek the highest salary to individuals who want satisfying and happy working environments. Realizing these needs has informed this research relating to companies in Dubai so as to come up with strategic solutions which maximize productivity and performance through the application of total quality management techniques for gradual improvements. It is about creating a culture that allows workers to interact with their environment satisfactorily, communicate efficiently, and develop positive behavioral patterns.
Introduction
The current business environment is challenging and has forced organizations to push their employees beyond their limits as per specific benchmarks. This kind of workplace pressure has been noted in various locations across the world with the United Arab Emirates being among the regions with high demand job requirements. Dubai has seen many companies lose their workers due to high workplace pressure, dissatisfaction, and low morale because of their lack of happiness on their specified job roles. This has made it difficult for company managements to make their employees happy without additional benefits like salary raises, bonuses, and other incentives. Irrespective, large and small companies are using strategic approaches that incorporate total quality management and employee engagement to enhance their levels of happiness.
Background
According to Suliman & Al-Hosani (2014), Dubai is home to some of the largest companies and businesses in United Arab Emirates but with the lowest levels of employee happiness and satisfaction. It is the reason why the happiness fund has been given to ensure that companywide programs are instituted among workers, personnel, and their supporting staffs to ensure they have high happiness index. Over the years, more workers have indicated their low levels of dissatisfaction and lack of happiness forcing authorities to seek ways of making their workplaces more amazing and satisfactory.
Understanding the dynamics of workplace happiness and satisfaction further requires determination of what an effective work culture constitutes. It is what makes an organization unique in terms of values, beliefs, traditions, behaviors, and attitudes. These are the shared values that influence how people interact, perform their tasks, and represent their organization while dealing with stakeholders. As explained by Hans-Jürgen & Brenninger (2015), having satisfactory conditions is what develops and effective workplace culture whose competitiveness, differentiation and operational efficiency is unmatched by rivals in the same industry of specialization.
Dynamics of workplace culture are the ones guiding the nature of research questions covered in this study. These questions include: how is workplace culture related to employee happiness? What factors of workplace culture determine employee happiness? These questions guide the process of identifying how workers feel about their jobs, as well as how their workplace culture has shaped their behaviors. Therefore, the aim of the study is to investigate the nature, significance, and strength of the relation between employee satisfaction and workplace performance. The biggest economies exist in UAE, and their future success is determined by their ability to have satisfied and happy professionals (Al-Hummadi, 2013; Unutmaz, 2014).
Research objectives
This research is aimed at highlighting the importance of total quality management practices in constructing operational performance characteristics that create happy workplaces. Its focus is to verify that employee satisfaction, loyalty, and happiness are critical to the success of organizations in Dubai. In the end, it is all about creating recommendations that can be used by companies in Dubai so that they can make their respective workplaces conducive and accommodative of unique employee requirements rather than investing in processes that incentivize workers. Another objective is the examination of current practices used to address issues related to employee happiness and remediating factors to further influence their overall job satisfaction.
Research method
A combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies will be used to collect information and subject it to analytical models as per the outlined research questions. The qualitative method will be used to collect information that cannot be subjected to mathematical analysis such as worker views, recommendations, and their respective proposals to improving their working environments. On the other hand, the quantitative method will be used to collect and perform mathematical analysis on data such as profitability, profit margins, and other variables that can be computed and correlated to the effect of employee happiness on organizational performance.
For this case, data collection will take place from secondary sources. This information is contained in previous research undertakings and will be used to understand Dubai in terms of its overall worker happiness and its corresponding performance outcomes. Other data collection instruments including questionnaires, phone interviews, and live interviews will be used in selected companies to gain firsthand information on the featured research questions. Employees will be engaged in discussion groups and semi-fixed questionnaires so that they can provide as much information as possible for subsequent analysis.
Participants will be selected using random sampling after their qualification for participation has been identified. First, companies will be identified and evaluated based on their number of workers, performance, and published information about their employee wellbeing. It is from these companies that the final 50 companies will be selected randomly. Conversely, employees to participate in interviews will be selected in such a way that they equally represent their departments. This research aims at recruiting more than 100 employees to participate and provide information regarding their happiness and satisfaction, as well as the general attitude within companies in Dubai.
Data analysis
Just like in dissertations by Keatinge (2014), Pavlova (2013) and Wilson (2014), quantitative data will be collected, cleaned, formatted, and coded for effective analysis using statistical application. The hypothesized relation between organizational culture and employee happiness and satisfaction will be tested through identification of patterns and variable correlations. The pooled primary and secondary data will further be subjected to validity and reliability tests to determine its appropriateness about the subject matter. Qualitative data will undergo content analysis after being encoded from interview transcriptions, notes, and other responses given by respondents during the whole research process.
Research timeframes
Due to resource constraints and research deadlines, the following timelines will ensure that the most accurate and elaborate data is collected for analysis. From its time of initiation, this research is intended to last for approximately six months as indicated below;
Ethical considerations
All research undertakings demand adherence to ethical processes and considerations to ensure validity and authenticity of the presented information. Approval will be sought from authors of secondary data sources so that their information can be used without infringement of their copyrights. On the other hand, constituent companies in Dubai will be required to offer written agreements accepting conduction of this research including interviewing their workers. Participants in this research will further be notified of their confidentiality and anonymity to ensure their contributions will not be used to victimize them. No disclosures about private information and protected organizational data will be made without explicit consent.
Conclusion
Employee happiness and satisfaction in Dubai is multifaceted and demands the application of accurate strategic options depending on organizational needs. Current global needs have transformed employees from people who seek the highest salary to individuals who want satisfying and happy working environments (Proctor, 2014; Salanova & Kirmanen, 2013). This research is aimed at identifying variables that influence employee behavior and cultural considerations that facilitate workers to interact with their environment satisfactorily, communicate efficiently, and develop positive behavioral patterns irrespective of their performance demands.
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