“The impact of human resource development practices on employee engagement and performance in Jordanian family restaurants”

Given the organizational positive outcomes of human resource development (HRD) practices like organizational effectiveness, sustainable competitive advantage, and organizational commitment, the current study was designed to detect the impact of HRD practices (employee training, employee empowerment, employee promotion) as independent variables on employee engagement and employee performance as dependent variables and to notify those who are interested. A quantitative descriptive-analytical method was adopted for the current research paper. Data were collected conveniently via a questionnaire from employees of family restaurants. Usable responses were ana-lyzed using IBM SPSS and AMOS on the strength of structural equation modeling (SEM). The current data identified employee training, employee empowerment, and employee promotion as key predictors of both employee engagement and employee performance. Employee empowerment has the highest impact on employee engagement, followed by employee promotion, while employee training has the highest effect on employee performance. Furthermore, employee engagement is positively related to employee performance. exploring the effects of these practices on, for in-stance, employee engagement and employee performance. However, studies on this issue using the samples from the restaurant sector are

The impact of human resource development practices on employee engagement and performance in Jordanian family restaurants

INTRODUCTION
Organizations are required to design and implement HRD practices to ensure numerous positive organizational outcomes in terms of organizational performance, organizational effectiveness, enhancing market performance, sustainable competitive advantage, and organizational commitment. Specifically, employee promotion, employee empowerment, employee motivation, employee training, and development practices positively affect organizational commitment, employee competencies, and job satisfaction (Mugizi,  Given the importance of HRD practices in improving the performance, both at individual and organizational levels, researchers have been interested in exploring the effects of these practices on, for instance, employee engagement and employee performance. However, studies on this issue using the samples from the restaurant sector are still few, especially since restaurants rarely train the staff because they recruit and attract people with sufficient skills and experience. Therefore, the present study is of interest and provides additional scientific knowledge by demonstrating human resource development practices in restaurants and their significance in improving the employee engagement and performance, which, in turn, affects the overall success of the organization.

HRD definition and practices
HRD practices had been defined as systematic and planned activities outlined by organizations to enable the employees to acquire prerequisite skills for coming across present and future job demands (Mugizi, 2019). According to Potnuru, Sahoo, and Sharma (2019), HRD is one of the sources through which organizations can improve the competencies of their employees. Although all human resource practices are important for the development of human resources, some of these practices are primarily directed towards employee development, such as employee training and promotion. The following paragraphs review the dimensions of HRD practices contained in the literature and the dimensions used in the present research paper. HRD practices were conceptualized by researchers using different practices. Examples of these practices in the literature are summarized in Table 1. Fletcher (2019) examined the relationship between employee perceived opportunities for development and job engagement through meaningfulness as a mediating variable and perceived line manager relations as a moderator variable. The author measured perceived opportunities for development using formal opportunities like second men and informal such as employee recruitment as a leader for new projects. Mugizi (2019) used three practices of HRD, which were employee performance appraisal, employee training, and employee promotion. Potnuru, Sahoo, and Sharma (2019) examined the impact of team building and employee empowerment as key dimensions of human resource development on employee competencies, as well as the moderating effect exerted by organizational learning culture on the relationship between these two constructs. Jain (2014) carried out a study to explore the effect of employee performance appraisal as a major practice of employee on employee efficiency, organizational efficiency, and productivity. Amirthaiyan and Victor (2016) mentioned five practices of employee development, which were performance appraisal, employee training and development, work-life quality, welfare measure, and employee engagement. Archana and Krishna (2016) considered employce training as a key pillar of HRD practices.
Three HRD practices were chosen for the current study: employee training, employee empowerment, and employee promotion. Training has been defined as an elevator of employee performance in accordance with his or her enhanced skills (Tahsildari & Shahnaei, 2015;Hidayat & Budiatma, 2018). Employee empowerment is another elevator of employee performance because it improves employee motivation and belonging to increase his or her engagement and commitment (Sweis, Al-Mansour, Tarawneh, & Al-Dweik, 2013). According to Al-Hawary et al. (2013), employee empowerment can be understood by allowing the employee to solve problems based on his or her judgment, accepting his or her initiatives, and the management's confidence in the employee's judgments. Finally, employee promotion refers to the elevation of the employee from his current job po-  sition to a higher job position than on the career ladder (Ali & Ahmad, 2017). Njagi (2012) identified three key characteristics of employee promotion, which are getting a better job position, a higher salary, plus extra responsibilities. Accordingly, the development of human resources involves preparing the employee cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally and ensuring his commitment to assume new responsibilities after promotion.

HRD practices outcomes
Outcomes of HRD practices can be well understood through social exchange theory. Fletcher (2019) highlights the importance of social exchange theory, which postulates that the employees and the management of an organization exchange tangible or intangible resources. Tangible resources such as cash incentives or intangible resources like employee recognition result in more positive outcomes from employee engagement. Numerous positive outcomes of HRD practices had been cited in the literature. The following paragraphs show the development of hypotheses related to HRD practices and some of these positive outcomes.

HRD practices and employee engagement
HRD practices aimed at improving the skills and competencies of employees are expected to lead to improved employee engagement. The term engagement was first defined by Kahn (1990) when he defined the term as a state in which an employee dedicated himself or herself to work physically, cognitively, and emotionally. Jose and Mampilly (2012) provided theoretical support on the positive effect of HR practices on employee engagement. The following is a presentation of some of the findings of some relevant studies on the relationship between HRD practices and employee engagement.
B. Shuck, Twyford, Reio Jr, and A. Shuck (2014) found that HRD practices had a significant negative effect on employee turnover intention when the relationship between these variables was mediated by employee engagement, as measured by cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement. Fletcher (2019) detected a positive relationship between employee perceived formal and informal opportunities for development and his or her engagement level. Sattar, Ahmad, and Hassan (2015) pointed out that employee engagement partially mediated the impact of HR practices, i.e., employee training, employee reward, and employee empowerment, on employee satisfaction and performance. Based on the abovementioned literature, the following hypotheses were assumed: H1: Employee training significantly anticipates the employee engagement.
H2: Employee empowerment significantly anticipates the employee engagement.
H3: Employee promotion significantly anticipates the employee engagement.

HRD practices and employee performance
It makes sense to assume that there is a positive correlation between employee training and work performance because the purpose of training is to improve employee skills and teach him or her how to apply these skills at work. Several previous studies have confirmed this assumption. The study of Busari, Mughal, Khan, Rasool, & Kiyaniet (2017) detected a positive effect of employee training and development on employee performance. Employee high degree of performance reported in Asfaw, Argaw, and Bayissa (2015) was due to employee training and development.
Yamoah (2014) concluded that the positive effect of human resource capacity, when conceptualized in terms of employee training and employee empowerment had been well documented in the literature. Mozael (2015) discussed the impact of training and development programs on employee performance and concluded that the positive impact of training lies in the skills and competencies acquired by the employee, which in turn leads to improving his or her ability to carry out work tasks efficiently. Using a sample of higher education system employees in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Alshery, Ahmad, and Al-Swidi (2015) asserted the positive influence of employee training on employee performance. Consequently, the following hypotheses were suggested: H4: Employee training significantly anticipates the employee performance.
H5: Employee empowerment significantly anticipates the employee performance.
H6: Employee promotion significantly anticipates the employee performance.
H7: Employee engagement significantly anticipates the employee performance.

Research sample and data collection
The population of the current study covers the employees of family restaurants in the capital city of Jordan (Amman). Based on the descriptive-analytical method, questionnaires were distributed to a convenience sample of employees. The total number of valid questionnaires for data analysis was 213 questionnaires. The rationale why this method of sampling was used is the availability of employees at data collection time (Etikan, Musa, & Alkassim, 2016).

Research instruments
A questionnaire was developed to collect the data required for the current study with reference to the literature ( . It contained five variables: employee training, employee empowerment, employee promotion as independent variables, as well as employee engagement and employee performance as dependent variables. The initial version included thirty-five items, so that each variable was measured using five items. After presenting the questionnaire to six experts from academics in three universities, twelve items were eliminated for their inadequacy to measure the variable. Table 2 presents the final version of the questionnaire after conducting the exploratory factor analysis (EFA), as will be shown later, in which reliability and validity were assured.  Figure 1 exhibits the conceptual model of this study. It incorporates five latent variables: employee training (TRG), employee empowerment (EMP), employee promotion (PRO), employee engagement (ENG), and employee performance (PER). The model was structured according to seven hypotheses, in which HRD practices were assumed to have effects on HRD outcomes. HRD dimensions TRG, EMP, and PRO were hypothesized to exert significant impacts on both employee engagement and employee performance. Moreover, employee engagement was postulated to predict employee performance.

Reliability and validity
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to extract the standardized factor loadings (SFL) and to compute the average variance extracted (AVE) and composite reliability (CR  (Raubenheimer, 2004). Therefore, factor loadings greater than 0.4 were chosen as a cut-off value to accept those loadings and hence meeting convergent validity criterion. The factor structure is shown in Table 3.
Based on the results in Table 3, it was noted that factor 1 (employee training) could be distinguished using four indicators with standardized factor loadings ranged between 0.69 and 0.77, while factor 2 (employee empowerment) came into view through four indicators with standardized factor loadings ranged between 0.72 and 0.82. Furthermore, the results indicated that the third factor of HRD practices (employee promotion) can be assessed using 4 indicators with standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.69 to 0.83. Employee engagement and employee performance as outcomes of HRD practices were also emanated with four indicators for each, with standardized factor loadings no less than 0.66. On that account, reliability as measured by composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha coefficients was supported for the reason that all values of CR along with alpha coefficients were greater than 0.7 (Al-Hawary, 2012). Convergent validity was also supported because all values of AVE were greater than 0.50 (Johari, Yahya, & Omar, 2011).

Goodness-of-fit model
The measurement model shown in Figure 2 was assessed in terms of goodness-of-fit model using four indices, which are Chi-square/degree of freedom ratio (CMIN/DF), GFI (goodness-of-fit Index), CFI (comparative fit index), and RMSEA (Root mean square error of approximation). The results indicated that the values of these indices were acceptable, i.e., CMIN/DF = 2.66, which is less than 3, GFI = 0.889, which is close to 0.90, CFI = 0.91, which is higher than 0.90 and RMSEA = 0.072, which is less than 0.10 (Hoe, 2008 Figure 3, illustrates that seven hypotheses were supported. The results are summarized in Table 4. However, different degrees of influence can be noted. In terms of employee training (TRG), the results showed that the construct had significant effects on both employee engagement and employee performance (β = 0.32 and 0.37, p < 0.05), respectively. Therefore, H1 and H2 were accepted.

DISCUSSION
Similar results were found in prior works. Collecting data from participants in numerous sectors in Pakistan, Nawaz et al. (2014) showed significant effects of employee training and development on employee engagement. According to Chandani, Mehta, Mall, and Khokhar (2016), employee training is one of the most significant factors affecting employee engagement. Akhtar, Nawaz, Mahmood, and Shahid (2016) underlined significant effects of high performance human resource practices, i.e., employee training, employee empowerment, and employee rewards, on employee engagement and employee performance. Their results confirmed that employee engagement played a significant role as a mediating variable between high-performance human resource practic-  Perhaps, the first type is prevalent in the current study, where empowerment was associated with employee engagement more than with employee performance because the employee believes that he or she can influence the work and the work environment. As for the relationship between employee promotion and performance, the employee believes that the promotion was due to good performance, and therefore no need to improve performance because he or she believes that he or she has already met the performance requirements.
In a study on employee training as HRD practices and technological change in Singapore by Osman-Gani and Jacobs (2005), employee training as an important HRD practice has been studied by introducing the methods used to implement the training programs. Examples include practical work training on the job, computer-based training, and training using workshops and seminars, and simulation-based training. According to Sparkes and Miyake (2000), both employee off-the-job and on-the-job training make up two principles of HRD in knowledge transfer. Brown and Latham (2000) showed that not all types of training lead to improved performance; for example, they concluded that self-instruction training did not improve employee performance. The present study did not include the verification of the role of training methods, so researchers are advised to conduct the studies using such methods. Moreover, this study examines five dimensions of HRD practices; therefore, it was recommended that more dimensions of HRD should be used in future studies.

CONCLUSION
This study aimed to explore the impact of human resource development practices on employee engagement and employee performance. Out of HRD practices identified in the literature, three were chosen for this study: employee training, employee empowerment, and employee promotion. Furthermore, the study aimed at investigating the impact of employee engagement on employee performance.
The results showed that the seven hypotheses were supported. And all of the practices (employee training, employee empowerment, and employee promotion) were positively related to both employee engagement and employee performance.
According to the hypotheses (H1, H2, and H3) employee empowerment had the highest influence on employee engagement, followed by employee promotion and employee training.
For the hypotheses (H4, H5, and H6) Employee empowerment was also the best in terms of its effect on employee performance, followed by employee training and employee promotion. These results asserted that HRD practices are different in their impacts on employee engagement and employee performance.
Some affect employee engagement more than others and some affect employee performance more than others. This means that an organization seeks to achieve employee engagement should focus primarily on employee empowerment and then on employee promotion. However, if the organization's goal is to improve employee performance, it should focus on employee training in the first place.
Finally, the last hypothesis (H7) shows that employee engagement enhance employee performance. So Organizations need to give emphasis on improving the employee engagement, by designing HRD practices to ensure positive outcomes.