Developing people's sustainability using organizational social sustainability framework: A conceptual model

Abstract

In challenging economic times, organizations are facing surmountable pressure due to constricting budgets, increasing inflation, and economic recession to strive for business profitability and positive shareholder orientations. Under the fragile business environment of balancing business profitability and brand equity, employees are always the soft targets with various means such as firing, retrenchment, and downsizing resulting in depression and increasing the plight of employees and their families. Such a business approach shatters employees' aspirations into severe workforce-related encounters such as low trust, loyalty, dedication, job commitment switching, and people's sustainability in the organization. In spite of populist human resource management research, peoples' sustainability aspects, i.e., employee happiness, satisfaction, well-being, social welfare, governance, etc., are widely scattered. To address the challenges of peoples' sustainability and develop sustained employee focussed business, it is crucial to redefine the human resource paradigm with a strong focus on workplace culture, sustainability, and happiness. The present research aims to develop a conceptual framework of organizational social sustainability to focus on value proposition, people's sustainability, and resilient corporate environment. The research has extensively explored the extant literature on the workforce challenges, people, planet and prosperity (3P) principle, happiness index, social psychology theories i.e., social exchange theory, ability, motivation, opportunity theory, & social identity theory, etc. and conducted personal interviews of social sustainability experts, human resource managers, academics and senior sustainability consultants to address the challenges of the most valuable resource of an organization-"people." The critical analysis of the literature review and experts' interviews provided an extensive list of critical parameters under the umbrella framework of organizational social sustainability (OSS). The key parameters of OSS are egalitarianism, health & safety, human rights and responsibilities, upskilling and succession planning, generosity, cultural enrichment, psychological well-being, and governance. The research findings also highlighted that strong workforce culture, including employee happiness and well-being, helps build employer brands and business profitability. Investing in peoples' sustainability also derives a strong footprint in building environmental and economic sustainability. OSS framework also aims to develop people or employees at the centre stage of the organization, which will significantly improve the business's financial performance. The framework of organizational social sustainability can be used by businesses to devise people-oriented strategies and differentiate themselves from competitors. Employees will develop corporate citizenship behaviors, becoming assets to the company. They will regard the workplace as a family and become more effective and productive. The entire model will assist businesses in becoming "Best Employers" and "Market Leaders" in the eyes of their stakeholders and the market. Employees will serve longer, and potential candidates will also be attracted to the business.