The Impact of Gender Diversity Practices on Organizational Performance: The Mediating Role of Employee Engagement and the Moderating Role of Strategic HR Analytics in Pakistan.

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of gender diversity practices, including recruitment, retention, and promotion policies that are implemented to promote gender inclusivity on organizational performance in Pakistani companies. Based on the organizational behavior and strategic human resources viewpoints, the paper can suggest the concept of employee engagement as a middle ground that helps the gender diversity practices to impact financial, operational, and innovation-related performance. It further assumes that Strategic HR Analytics Capability (the organizational capability to gather, analyze, and utilize HR data to enable it in making decisions) will mediate the indirect relationship between diversity practices and performance by enhancing the engagement route. The study has assumed a quantitative, cross-sectional design in terms of survey data of the employees and HR leaders in various industries in Pakistan. Direct, mediating and moderated-mediation hypotheses will be tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). It is anticipated that gender diversity practices have a positive impact on employee engagement that subsequently benefits the work performance of an organization and that the positive impact of engagement is amplified in the presence of greater strategic HR analytics capability. The research has both theoretical and practical contributions, such as combining diversity management with analytics-enabled strategic HRM and provides managers with evidence-based information on how to combine inclusive policies and analytics capabilities to ensure maximum performance. Policy implications and HR practitioner implications in the context of Pakistan are also discussed, as well as limitations and future research directions.