Employee Engagement Analysis and Recommendations for Savola Group

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of employee engagement practices at Savola Group, a leading industrial company in Saudi Arabia. It examines the company's current strategies, including the emphasis on organizational culture, diversity in the workplace, and various employee engagement programs. The report reviews existing literature and models like Kahn’s model, the Maslach, Schaufelli and Leiter Model, and the Aon Hewitt model to evaluate the effectiveness of Savola Group's practices. It highlights the importance of cultural development, diversity, training, and employee feedback. The research also discusses the use of social media and the significance of providing a supportive environment for employees. Finally, the report offers recommendations for improving employee engagement, aiming to align the interests of both the organization and its employees for enhanced performance and retention.

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Executive summary
Savola Group is one of the leading companies in Saudi Arabia with maximising its market
through ugh better services and quality of products. One of the important factor for reaching the
pinnacle of success is its high emphasis on the employee engagement policies. The organisation
has a vast range of employee engagement programs that help to build a good relation between
the organisation and the employees. Based on the primary resources it can be argued that apart
from making good relation with the managers, training and development is also a pivotal part
for4 Savola Group. However, the literature review confirmed that concerning the employee
feedback and expectation is also crucial for establishing a good employee engagement practice.
Therefore, Savola Group has to initiate a better employee engagement framework where both the
interests and expectation of the organisation and the employees can be reflected meaningfully.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Employee engagement practice in Savola Group............................................................................3
Organisational culture..................................................................................................................4
Diversity in workplace.................................................................................................................5
Review of the existing literature review..........................................................................................7
Kahn’s model of employee engagement......................................................................................7
Meaningfulness........................................................................................................................8
Safety.......................................................................................................................................8
Availability..............................................................................................................................9
Maslach, Schaufelli and Leiter Model.........................................................................................9
Aon Hewitt model......................................................................................................................11
Recommendation...........................................................................................................................12
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
Reference.......................................................................................................................................14

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Introduction
Savola Group is one of the leading industrial companies in Saudi Arabia that operated in
Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. The main products that Savola is offering to the
customers are edible oils, sugar, dairy products and fast food chains as well. As a matter of fact,
the Savola Group is the largest grocery retail chain in Middle East with the subsidiary company
named Panda Retail Company. As per the report of Savola.com (2019) it can be stated that
Savola Group ranks 9 among the 100 leading companies in Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1979, the
success of Savola Group obviously becomes a subject of further research on the HR role to
engage the employees and developing high performance.
In this regard, this research is going to focus on the employee engagement practices that
Savola Group is practiced in order to bring more efficacy into the organisational practice.
Therefore, this research will go for the existing employee engagement practice in Savola Group
and discussing a theoretical perception with the help of peer reviewed articles in order to
evaluate the practice effectively.
Employee engagement practice in Savola Group
People in Savola Group are highly motivated through passion and commitment that the
company provides. It is an instance of international foot prints that Savola Group is liked to
follow in the entire organisational practice. Based on the primary research, it can be found out
that there are much need of cultural development establishment of cultural diversity in Savola.
One of the major reason is that Savola Group should focus on developing and maintaining
cultural diversity and organisational culture in order to get strategic advantage in the competitive

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business. Engaging and retaining talented employees is the important task that Savola Group is
willing to maintain in association with the development in knowledge and skills and through
enhancing the understanding of learn, lead and respond to challenges. Therefore, a wide range of
employee engagement practices are introduced by Savola Group HR department so that the
employees can feel more engaged and highly motivated to work at Savola Group. In this regard,
the primary quantitative research technique will be followed in order to get data and evaluate the
employee engagement practice in Savola Group.
Organisational culture
In this regard, the first step to deal with the employee engagement practice in Savola
Group, it can be stated that the HR department is closely emphasised on the workplace culture
and the business performance. According to Slack, Corlett and Morris (2015) workplace culture
has a direct impact on the business performance. The Savola Group team is believes in the
practice of workplace development so that interests of the employees can be intertwined with the
corporate values. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of engagement program that Savola Group
is conducted such as the Tawer program and the Nitaqat program (savola.blob.core.windows.net
2019). One of the major purpose of those program is to improve the relationship between the
management and the employees. Moreover, employee feedback and employee engagement
survey are also evaluated in course of getting responses from the employees. The entire
organisation is participated in those programs either as a participant or as coordinator. The role
of the senior management, particularly the CEO is to keep employees up to date with important
information and events. For making a transparent and relaxed organisational environment a
question-answer round is being conducted in order to make fruitful and positive conversation
between the employees and the managers.

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Apart from that the Smile Day campaign is also imposed immense importance to the
willingness of Savola Group to engage the employees effectively. The employees are asked in a
specific day to share their happy moments while working in Savola. The comments and happy
memories of the employees are also published in the social media platform with the consent of
the employees so that it will provide a positive measure for the organisation to initiate effective
employee engagement practice. As far as the research of Sharma and Bhatnagar (2016) is
concerned, it can be stated that for establishing better employee engagement, the use of social
media is one of the best practice that the corporate organisation should deal with. It has a
psychological impact on the employees as well in terms of making them happy and satisfied
enough to work with the organisation. To ensure a better workplace environment, Savola Group
also tries to make amicable relationship with the newly employed employees. Therefore, lunch
with the CEO is also set for the newly employed employees so that they feel incorporated into
the organisation. It seems an effective measure for Savola Group to manage the employees and
engage them with the organisational practices profoundly.
Diversity in workplace
It is also important for Savola Group to set a practice of diversity so that the performance
of the company will be enriched highly. The workforce in Savola Group is highly diverse and
belongs to different cultures, religion and communities. There are plenty of important aspects
that the HR department of Savola Group should take so that the diversity in workforce can be
restored properly. As Downey et al. (2015) opined that diversity in workplace is resembled with
enhancing the productivity of the organisation properly. One of the important reasons behind
such outcome is that diversity in workforce primarily puts emphasis on the talent management
rather than keeping a track on the ethnicity, religion or culture of the organisation. Therefore,

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Savola Group also looks for an effective measure where the interests of increase the productivity
and performance can be maintained through procuring a diverse workforce. A Human Capital
team is organised in this regard which follows the path of diverse and dynamic features. The
workforce of Savola Group is huge enough with a strength of more than 20,000 employees. Most
of them are permanent employees with a strong leadership that is enabled to provide proper
guidance to the employees. Savola Group also puts emphasis on assigning right people with right
job so that it will be effective for the organisation to get results as it expects.
Besides this, the role of developing and training of the employees is also considered to be
a major facets of employee engagement program. Odle-Dusseau et al. (2016) advocated that it is
a pertinent factor for the employees to get proper facilities for self-development. The
organisations should have the facilities so that the employees can enhance their skills and ensure
sustainability in near future. Henceforth, the importance of the employee training and
development practice has a direct relation with the interests of the employees and determining
retention of the employees. In response to this, Savola Group also tries to ensure the stability in
its workforce and willing to reduce the rate of employee turnover effectively. In the year 2018,
Savola Group initiated a national capacity building program so that the Saudi people can get
interested in participating in Savola Group and procure a strong and firm leadership quality
accompanied with the organisational objectives (savola.blob.core.windows.net 2019). Even for
developing a relevant leadership quality, Savola Group intends to carry out an assessment on the
required leadership quality and find out that the level of potentiality and standard that the store
managers should possess in order to get job at Savola Group. Performance and efficiency of the
managers are the focal point for Savola Group to keep in track and a talent management practice

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is also incorporated into the program so that it will provide and develop leaders that the
organisation wants.
Review of the existing literature review
The literature review of this report is primarily focused on the peer reviewed articles and
scholarly journals relevant with the employee engagement practice of the HR department in any
organisation. In course of understanding different aspects of employee engagement, key theories
and models are identified and discussed in this literature review so that an effective model or a
hybrid practice can be implemented in order to manage the employee engagement practice in
Savola Group more prudent and reliable. This part is clearly followed a secondary research
technique practice whereas evaluating the existing employee engagement mechanism in Savola
Group is developed in reference to the qualitative research technique.
Kahn’s model of employee engagement

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Figure 1: Kahn’s model of employee engagement
(Anthony‐McMann et al. 2017)
Kahn’s model of employee engagement is considered to be the oldest model of employee
engagement that emphasises on some of the important aspects of employee engagement practice.
Most of those elements are psychological and associated with both personal engagement and
disengagement of work meaningfulness, availability and safety. This model tries to portray an
effective psychological aspect that influence the employees to choose their job respectively.
Byrne et al. (2017) asserted that the employee engagement model of Kahn developed an insight
into the intensity and motive of a job aspirant that drove him enough to choose the perfect job as
he desired. Therefore there are three aspect of an employee psychology, such as,
Meaningfulness
It connotes the importance and value of a job that helps the employee to cope with his or
her aspiration. As Albrecht et al. (2015) mentioned that the meaningfulness of job is always
made the employees very clear about his priorities. Therefore, he sets goals so that his demands
can be met perfectly. In fact, meaningfulness is also considered to be a satisfaction level of the
employee so that he can find the value of the task. It is also resulted in developing the
performance of the employees and lead them towards swift professional progress (Alagaraja and
Shuck 2015). Getting bogged down into tasks that the employee does not feel enough for him
will influence him to pursue for different jobs with better opportunities.
Safety
It can be stated that safety in work is always a pivotal factor for the employees to feel
secure and satisfied with the job. Safety can be identified in two different aspect. One is

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associated with the practice of delivering a security to the employees that his job is secured and
important to the organisation (Hameduddin and Fernandez 2019). On the other hand, life threats
or financial stringency are never being tolerated by the employees so that he or she is always
looking for better opportunities and financial benefits. As a result of that it becomes an important
aspect for the business organisation to meet the basic requirements of the employees and make
them feel relaxed and perform effectively.
Availability
The physical and psychological ability is also played as a dependent factors that influence
the employee engagement in workplace. It is not possible for all the employees to perform in a
same manner. It proves the adaptability of an employee to deal with the practices properly and
engage himself with the organisation intricately (Alcala 2017). However, for all the employees it
is not possible to intertwine with the organisational performance. One of many reasons is
because of the physical and psychological ability of the employee that create an obstacle to his
development. Henceforth, it is essential for the employees themselves to choose the job carefully
and understanding the requirements for the job designation.

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Maslach, Schaufelli and Leiter Model
Figure 2: Maslach, Schaufelli and Leiter Model
(De Beer and Bianchi, 2017)
This model is rightly discussed the relationship between job burnout and the employee
engagement practice. The model of Maslach, Schaufelli and Leiter is clearly reflected a link
between the job burnout and its consequences on employee engagement in organisation.
According to Taylor et al. (2017) job burnout means an exhaustion in workplace resulted lack of
motivation and physical or emotional ability of an employee to work any longer. It is important
for the business companies to ease the pressure on the employees because increase in workplace
pressure can reduce the innovation and productivity of the employees and they are not able to
produce quality performance. As a matter of fact, the report of de Mol, Ho and Pollack (2018)
reflected a completely different perspective by highlighting the facts that organisational culture is

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also responsible to deliver a job burnout for the employees. In this regard, the managers and the
colleagues are entitled to set a good organisational environment where the rest of the employees
feel relaxed and focused to provide quality work performance. It is important for the business
corporates to understand that the influencing and motivating the employees is a mandatory
monitoring practice that the companies should have. Henceforth, organisational policies and
regulations should emphasise on the workplace environment and show equal justice and
treatment to all the employees. It will definitely help to build up an effective organisational
practice where employee engagement can be developed properly.
Aon Hewitt model
Figure 3: Aon Hewitt model
(Gustomo 2015)

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The Aon Hewitt model reflects the individual state of engagement in connection with the
organisational antecedents. Based on this model, it can be stated that the emotional and
intellectual involvement of the employees will pave the way for a motivational practice that the
employees are always aspired for. According to Pawar (2018) there are six engagement drivers
and twenty two organisational antecedents in the Aon Hewitt model that are identified as the
quality of life, work, people, opportunities, total rewards and the company practices. Those
factors are highly and intricately link with each other and try to play a pivotal role in the process
of developing an engagement of the employees in organisation. It can be stated that the Aon
Hewitt model is strongly focused on the emotional condition of employees and the importance of
the organisation to maintain its framework and facilities in such a way so that the fundamental
interests of the employees can be served positively. Padhi, Panda and Kumar (2015) opined that
the role of the Aon Hewitt model is to set some core components of employee satisfaction and
integrate it with the employee engagement as the satisfaction level of the employees can pave the
way for high employee engagement. Moreover, Imandin, Bisschoff and Botha (2016) advocated
that the employee engagement and employee satisfaction are juxtaposing each other because the
motive of both the elements are same to reduce the rate of turnover in organisation. Effective
leadership, workplace culture, promotion and recognition, role of the HR and career
opportunities all those elements are incorporated into the employee satisfaction e3xtensively. As
a matter of fact, those factors are crucial to set high employee satisfaction. At the same time the
employee satisfaction helps them to satisfy with their work and the privileges that they get in
their job. Therefore, they are very much relaxed and confident enough to work in the company as
long as they can. This is clearly the main theme of employee engagement to retain the employees
and reduce turnover rate as far as it can.

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Recommendation
For Savola Group, it is important to consider the emotional intelligence and creative
mind-set of the new and existing employees so that a better employee engagement practice can
be developed. Based on the primary sources, it can be argued that the organisation entirely
focuses on the responsibility of itself to shape a better employee engagement framework.
However, the role and choice of the employees is also important in order to build a strong and
efficient employee engagement practice. For this, the secondary sources in the form of literature
review pointed out the importance of the emotional intelligence of the employees to influence the
staff engagement practice. Henceforth, it is crucial for Savola Group to put emphasis on both the
employee and organisational perception and establish a employee engagement framework that
serves the interests of both the employees and the organisation.
Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, it can be argued that the report rightly puts emphasis on
the existing employee engagement framework that is carried out by Savola Group. The company
focuses on a number of important initiatives and programs that are associated with only the
company’s initiative rather than spontaneous participation from the employees. Henceforth, a
new HR practice has to be implemented that associates equal participation from the staffs and the
organisation and bolster the employee engagement approaches of Savola Group. Therefore, it
can be concluded that the report rightly highlights the importance of the new employee
engagement in Savola Group and the required measures that the organisation should follow
extensively.

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