The impact of demographical variables on HRM practices in Saudi Telecom Company : An empirical exploration

Article history: Received: November 26, 2017 Received in revised format: November 26, 2017 Accepted: February 7, 2018 Available online: February 7, 2018 Fair HRM practices are indispensable for the success of any company, especially the growing companies. The aim of this exploration is to understand the impact of certain personal characteristics of the employees of Telecommunication Company on HRM practices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A booklet consisted of HRM practices questionnaires along with personal characteristics blank sheet were used to gather the information of the respondents. A total of 210 sample collected from public and private sector Telecommunication Company existing in the Kingdom. The collected data was analyzed by inferential and descriptive statistics and the results were analyzed. The results revealed that married & unmarried, public & private sector, younger & older, high & low income and high & low experienced group of employees differ but in a varied degree on HRM practices in terms of performance appraisal, training and development, security and health, recruitment and selection, intention to stay in the company communication, working conditions, compensation and benefits, job analysis and co-worker relationships. The findings’ significances and implications were also elaborated at length and few suggestions were provided that could enhance the fair HRM practices in the telecommunication company in the Kingdom. © 2018 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada


Introduction
There is no second deliberation that present era is termed as technological, stressful, self-center and competitive.In such era, Saudi Arabian telecom companies also need to address themselves to come up with the boundaries of the country as well as the outside to maintain the integrity of HRM practices for the effectiveness.Extant investigations have been conducted on the globe but very few in the context of Saudi Arabia to identify the challenges tackling that how fair HRM practices should be used to manage the workforce diversity in the telecommunication company.Indeed, it is necessary to deal the situation in a cordial manner to make their human resources more enthusiastic and develop highest potential in order to accomplish the goals of the organization by using HRM practices in a fair manner.The brand or image and holistic effectiveness of the company depends on how the HRM practices are applied in their organization.The success and failure always depends on the development of the human resource and understanding aesthetic of different cultural backgrounds, ways of thinking, knowledge, experience, origins, gender equality, nationalities, mindsets, etc. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is considered as "under-researched" in the exploration of fair or unfair HRM practices (Al Kahtani et al., 2016).However, various definitions were given by the management experts.One of the researchers, Minbaeva (20005) conceptualized the term HRM practices as "a set of practices used by organization to manage human resource through facilitating the development of competencies that are firm specific, produce complex social relation and generate organizational knowledge to sustain competitive advantages".On the other hand Boxall and Purcell (2011) defined HRM practices as "a set of activities that intend to add value to an organization by managing people related aspects".It is observed from the both definitions that HRM contributes to attract, retain, motivate and develop the employees in order to perform well in the organization through existing fair practices, philosophies and standardize policies.

Review of literature
The present study tries to review the available literature through papers, theses, books and dissertations pertaining to HRM practices to gain insight about the knowledge and provide ample information to the audiences.The study made an attempt to review the latest studies to show the significance of them in this particular filed on the globe.Syed and Yan (2012) jointly investigated in their research that job rotation, performance based pay, empowerment, employee participation, grievances handling procedures, merit based promotion and employee participation had positive relationships with job satisfaction.However, most of the studies related to job satisfaction also revealed the relationship with HRM practices such as promotion, advancement training etc. through job satisfaction scale (Allam, 2013;Al Kahtani & Allam, 2014;Allam, & Harish, 2010;Ali et al., 2004;Allam & Reddy, 2007;Al Kahtani & Allam, 2013).Moreover, HRM practices that help to achieve the performance of organization are recruitment, motivation, compensation, reward system, performance management and appraisal and reward (Islam, 2013).
Hassan (2016) initiated a study among Textile Companies in Pakistan and random sampling technique was used to gather the necessary data.He opined in his research paper that HRM practices pertaining to employee involvement, training, performance appraisal, career planning and compensation had positive influence on the performance of the employees.Razzaq et al. (2017) conducted a study among the employees working in telecom sector in Pakistan and identified the impact of HRM practices on employee commitment.They revealed that HRM practices such as career practice planning and compensation practice had significantly positive impact on employee commitment.

Objectives of the investigation
On the globe numerous investigations have been carried out by the researchers but there are few investigations conducted on HRM practices in the Kingdom.Hence, the current investigator was taken to explore the understanding of HRM practices existing in telecom companies in Saudi Arabia.Moreover, we aim to explore the impact of certain biographical variables on HRM practices in telecom companies.

Hypotheses
On the basis of the above objectives formulated by the researcher and based on the past review of literature, the following null hypotheses are stated: HO1: There is not any significant difference between married and unmarried telecom employees according to various aspects of HRM practices.HO2: Public and private telecom sector employees are not different based on the various facets of HRM practices.
HO3: Younger and older in age group of telecom employees are not different significantly according to various aspects of HRM practices.HO4: There is not any meaningful difference between low and high experienced telecom employees pertaining according to the dimensions of HRM practices.HO5: Low and high income group of telecom sector employees are not different based on the various dimensions of HRM practices.

Research Methodology
Sample: The present study consists of 210 randomly selected employees of the public and the private sectors of the telecommunication firms working in the Kingdom who are aged differently and with various job experiences.In the current study all participants were male.
Instrument Used: A booklet consists of HRM practices survey and the demographical blank sheet was used to gather the information from the respondents.HRM practices instruments included ten dimensions where each dimension is rated on the continuum of five-point rating scale with response categories of strongly disagree to strongly agree with a weighted score of 1-5.Moreover, a demographical blank sheet was used to collect the personal characteristics of the employees such as gender, marital status, age, etc.
Data Analysis: Keeping the realm of the objectives of the current investigation, both inferential and descriptive statistics techniques have been used to analyze the data and make the results in a scholastic manner which can add certain values to the HR practitioners.
Procedure and Ethics: The instruments selected for this particular investigation was in English and has been translated to Arabic with the help of expert to maintain the essence of the items of the survey.The purpose to translate the questionnaire was to make it convenient for the respondents to understand it better.The official permission has been taken before the collection of the data.The respondents were briefed about the purpose of the study and informed them to read the instructions very carefully before furnishing the questionnaire.The subjects were assured that their responses will be not disclosed to any higher officials and will be used for academic purposes only.was not rejected.It is also observed from the table that mean scores of the married employees were higher in all aspects of HRM practices which were also found to be significantly different and this might be because of the maturity, higher level of understanding about the job specifications, job descriptions, value of training & development, working conditions, etc.The results of Table 2 indicate that the two groups of employees were working in different sectors on various facets of HRM practices.The results also indicate significant differences on the recruitment & selection (t=2.225,P>.05), the performance appraisal (t=4.043,P>.01), the compensation and benefits (t=2.356,P>.01) and the intention to stay (t=2.333,P>.05).However, the two groups were not differ significantly on other facets of HRM practices, hence, the proposed null hypothesis (HO2) was not rejected.It can be said that private sectors had fair practices in the selection & recruitment, the performance appraisal and the compensation & benefits as compared to public sector's employees and thereby, the majority of the employees from private sectors were having intention to continue with the ongoing job.
As we can observe from the results of Table 3, no significant difference was found between the younger and the older in age group of employees according to different HRM practices except on the recruitment & selection (t=2.853,P>.01), the training & development (t=2.205,P>.05), and the intention to stay (t=2.251,P>.05) but majority of other practices were not significant at any level and thereby, the proposed null hypothesis (HO3) was not rejected.The result can be explained that younger group of employees believe that the practices were fair in the recruitment & selection and the training & development practices.The mean score showed higher among older employees for the case of intention to stay practice indicates older employees intended to continue with the present job due to loyalty and satisfactions (Allam & Harish, 2010;Al Kahtani et al., 2016;Allam & Habtemariam, 2009;Al Kahtani & Allam, 2014).not showing significant differences on other facets of HRM practices, therefore, the proposed null hypothesis (HO4) was not rejected.This is because the high experience groups were having higher mean scores on these three facets because of having more knowledge, ability to synthesize the things, etc. compared with the low experience group of telecom sector employees.The result might be highlighted that two groups believed that practices were slightly different due to variations in the mean scores which indicate that income plays pivotal role in understanding the practices prevailing in the telecom company.

Conclusion
The current investigation has revealed that the differences were in place between various groups such as age, marital status, income, experience and types of sector of employees who were working in Telecom Company according to various dimensions of HRM practices.Based on findings, the following conclusions have been drawn as:  The group of married employees showed significantly higher degree of HRM practices on the job analysis, the training & development, the compensation and benefits, the working conditions and the security & health than their counterparts. The employees of the private sector telecom company perceived significantly more HRM scores on the recruitment & selection, the performance appraisal, the compensation and the benefits and intention to stay than the employees of the public sector did. A significant differences were observed between the younger and older group of the employees on the basis of HRM practices with regard to the recruitment & selection, the training & development and the intention to stay practices. The high experienced group of employees showed higher degree of mean scores on the training and development, the working condition and the security and health. It was observed that the mean scores of the high income group were higher than their counterparts on all HRM practices in the present investigation.

Suggestions and Limitations
It is observed from the findings that HRM practices existed in the telecom sector of the Kingdom, but found marginally different between various biographical variables, so there is a need to implement fair HRM practices by the management to enhance the performance of the employees.Unfair HRM practice is corrosive and requires timely corrective measures by the higher officials to make the organization more viable and successful.As noted by the various researchers, satisfaction, timely training & feedback, financial & non-financial incentives and other management practices play pivotal role in enriching the commitment and involvement of the employees to perform well (Allam, 2007(Allam, , 2017)).
The empathy and sympathy both should go in side by side way so that employees could feel some sense of belongingness and contribute major role in decision making process to build the organization success but HRM practices should be fair.
This particular research initiated only on one type of the employees i.e. telecom company, thereby it is necessary to conduct similar studies in future with more different organizations to have authentic and significant findings.As far as sample is concerned, more sample should be taken in future research with diversified groups.In glimpse, HRM practices are plenty and need to add more practices which can contributes in the process of enhancement of the employees' performance in a planned study.

Table 1
Mean, SD and t-value of social status group of telecom employees on different HRM practices It is observed from the results of Table 1 that the mean scores of the married and unmarried categories of employees working in the telecom companies on different aspects of HRM practices i.e. job analysis (3.65 & 3.43), training & development (3.52 & 3.26), compensation and benefits (3.62 & 3.28), working conditions (3.76 & 3.50) and security & health (3.53 & 3.11) were found different with the discrepancies in the scores of standard deviation.The t-values were found as (2.579, P>.01) for the job analysis, (3.069, P>.01) for the training & development, (3.026, P>.01) for the compensation and benefits, (3.051, P>.01) for the working condition, and (3.704, P>.01) for the security & health but the rest of the other aspects were not significant at any level and thereby, the proposed null hypothesis (HO1)

Table 2
Mean, SD and t-value of public and private sector telecom employees on different HRM practices

Table 3
Mean, SD and t-value of younger and older age groups of telecom employees for HRM practices

Table 4
Mean, SD and t-value of low and high experienced groups of telecom employees on HRM practices It is observed from Table4that the two groups of employees pertaining to experiences in terms of high and low found to be different significantly based on the three facets of HRM practices.The results also revealed that the mean scores on these facets i.e. the training and development (3.333 &3.512), the working condition(3.580&3.735)and the security and health(3.224&3.506).The t-values appeared on Table 4 are (t=2.157,P>.05) for the training and development, (1.921, P>.05) for the working condition and (2.579, P>.01) for the security & health.Moreover, the low & high experienced groups were

Table 5
Mean, SD and t-value of low and high income groups of telecom employees on HRM practices