Leadership is a complex topic and can be studied from different approaches that require different definitions (Oberer & Erkollar, 2018). For the purpose of this study, the focus is on self-leadership. Self-leadership has its theoretical roots in Bandura’s (1977, 1986) social learning and social cognitive theories, in self-regulation theory (Carver & Scheier, 1981), and in the concept of ‘self-management’ (Manz, 1983). It is also related to the concept of influencing oneself (Alves et al., 2006). Bandura’s (1977, 1986) theories explained how people can influence their own motivation, cognition and behaviour. The continuous interaction between people and their environment allows them to use the consequences of their own behaviour as a source of information and motivation (Norris, 2008). Behavioural self-regulation processes enable people to monitor the gap between actual performance levels and the standards or goals they set themselves (Carver & Scheier, 2002). Self-leadership strategies are applied to improve the effectiveness of these self-regulatory processes. These strategies include behaviour-focused strategies, natural reward strategies and constructive thought strategies (Neck & Houghton, 2006). Self-leadership can be surmised as the ability to self-influence to achieve one’s goals (Mustaffa & Ghani, 2019). Exceptional HR leaders are ‘results-oriented, team builders, motivators, highly organised and demonstrate the ability to coach and develop the people around them’ (Longenecker & Fink, 2015, p. 23).

Politis (2006) stated that Manz developed a theory which goes beyond Bandura’s study of self-control. According to this theory, behaviour-focused strategies provide specific approaches to identify ineffective behaviours and replace them with more effective ones (Houghton, Dawley, & DiLiello, 2012). These strategies include: self-reward, self-cueing, self-observation, self-punishment, self-goal setting, self-correcting feedback and practice (Manz, 1992; Manz & Neck, 2004; Neck & Houghton, 2006). Houghton and Neck (2002) stated that these strategies were designed to encourage positive, desirable behaviours that lead to successful outcomes, whilst suppressing negative, undesirable behaviours that lead to unsuccessful outcomes.

Self-leading individuals are motivated to do a task and use self-influencing strategies such as goal setting, self-observation, creating natural rewards as part of their will (volition) to take a particular course of action (Van Dorssen-Boog, De Jong, Veld, & Van Vuuren, 2020). Natural reward strategies focus on the enjoyable aspects of a task or activity (Manz & Neck, 2004; Neck & Houghton, 2006). Natural reward strategies can be expressed as situations in which the fun aspects of the task or activity are motivated or rewarded by the individual. The task or activity should be enjoyable so that a natural reward should be apparent. Then, the individual should move away from the negative aspects of the task and focus on the rewarding aspects (Manz & Neck, 2004; Neck & Houghton, 2006). In this way, the individual who focuses on the pleasant aspects of the task exhibits better performance and increases his or her performance (Houghton & Neck, 2002). There are two basic natural reward strategies, namely building more pleasant features for the task and shaping perceptions for the task (Manz & Neck, 2004; Neck & Houghton, 2006). Essentially, the former strategy represents changing the task itself in order to make it better, whilst the latter involves cognitive reframing of the task in order to make it seem better (Mahembe, Engelbrecht & De Kock, 2013).

Constructive thought pattern strategies can be expressed as the formation of constructive thought patterns and the formation of habits that will affect performance positively. Manz (quoted in Neck, Nouri, & Godwin, 2003, p. 701) described a thought pattern as ‘certain ways of thinking about our experiences’ and ‘habitual ways of thinking’. These strategies include the definition and change of non-functional beliefs, assumptions, mental images and self-talk (Neck & Houghton, 2006). Positive and effective thought patterns are developed, and negative thoughts are reduced (Manz & Sims, 2001; Neck & Houghton, 2006). Mental imagery refers to imagining the successful performance of a task before it is actually completed (Neck et al., 2003).

Industry 4.0 is upon us, with significant implications for how organisations conduct business (Baldassari & Roux, 2017). The challenges the HR profession faces in I4.0 include: the huge amount of data we have, the rapidity of change, new business models and even smart services enabled by digital tools (Dhanpat et al., 2020). The future of work by Schultz (2017) highlighted the following future HRM factors: analytical skills, employment relations and future workspace. The relationship between these factors was not further investigated. For this reason, for the purpose of this article, analytical skills, employment relations and future workspace formed part of the critical dimensions of future HRM.

Over the past two decades, HR scholars and practitioners have exerted a great deal of effort towards understanding engagement. The concept of employee engagement was first proposed by Kahn (1990, p. 693) as the ‘harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; self-employment and self-expression of people physically, cognitively, and emotionally in their work lives’. Saks (2006, p. 601) defined employee engagement as a ‘different and unique concept’ which is composed of knowledge, emotion and behaviour. Macey and Schneider (2008) suggested to regard engagement as a wide-ranging term which contains different types of engagement (traits engagement, psychological state engagement, behavioural engagement), and each one needs different conceptualisations, such as proactive personality (traits engagement), involvement (psychological state engagement) and organisational citizenship behaviour (behavioural engagement). Work engagement has been defined as ‘a positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption’ (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006, p. 702). Work the I4.0 challenges, HR practitioners need a positive level of enthusiasm and dedication toward their job (Alzyoud, 2018) and this is the reason why work engagement was chosen as construct in this study. The three dimensions of work engagement, namely vigour, dedication and absorption are discussed below.

Previous studies have shown that there is a relationship between self-leadership and work engagement (Kotzé, 2017; Shaoping, Huachun, & Yongheng, 2015). Breevaart et al. (2014) found that daily self-leadership (comprising five strategies: self-goal setting, self-reward, self-punishment, self-observation and self-cueing) was positively related to employees’ resourcefulness and this increased their daily work engagement. Breevaart et al. (2014) also argued that self-leadership enables employees to motivate themselves, achieve required standards and optimise their work environment, and therefore increases their work engagement. Harunavamwe (2018) stated that self-leadership is an integral part of the personal resources that facilitate positive behaviour that eventually translates to work engagement. Gomes, Curral and Caetano (2015) found that work engagement had a mediating effect on the relationship between self-leadership and individual innovation. It is interesting to note that self-leadership can have a significant effect on work engagement as well as a partial mediating effect on the relationship between organisational justice and employees’ work engagement (Park, Song, & Lim, 2016).

Training opportunities, career development opportunities and developmental performance appraisal, as part of the key dimensions of developmental HR practices, were positively related to work engagement in the study of Ahmed, Kura, Umrani and Pahi (2019). The study of Aybas and Acar (2017) found that perceived HR practices (skill, motivation, empowerment enhancing and working conditions) predicted work engagement through psychological capital. Alzyoud (2018) found that HRM practices (employee communications, employee development, and rewards and recognition) influenced work engagement. There is a positive relationship between HRM (ability enhancing practices, motivation enhancing practices and opportunity enhancing practices) (Tensay & Singh, 2020) and engagement. Tensay and Singh (2020) also found that engagement partially mediated the relationship between HRM and organisational performance. Human resource management (service training and performance appraisal) has a positive and significant influence on work engagement (Suan & Nasurdin, 2014). Work engagement and job crafting mediate the relationship between employee perceptions of HR practice and employee performance (Guan & Frenkel, 2018).

Human resource management practices (high performance, high commitment, high control, high involvement and international HRM) and leadership (authentic, ethical, transformative, paternalistic, authoritarian and global leadership, and leader-member exchange) have interactive effects on organisational, team/unit and individual outcomes (Zhao, Liu, Zhu, & Liu, 2020). Leadership has an indirect effect on outcomes through HRM practices, and HRM practices may have an indirect effect on outcomes through leadership. For example, transformational CEOs are likely to adopt skill-based HRM practices (Lopez-Cabrales, Bornay-Barrachina, & Diaz-Fernandez, 2017). Gill, Gardner, Claeys and Vangronsvelt (2018) found that there is a link between authentic leadership and HR practices (system strength, alignment and fit).

Previous studies about the relationship between self-leadership and future HRM (analytical skills, employment relations and future workspace) could not be found. Previous studies about the relationship between work engagement and future HRM (analytical skills, employment relations and future workspace) could also not be found. The aim of this article was therefore to fill this research gap.

The following hypotheses were investigated in this article:

The hypothesised model is illustrated in Figure 1.

Within the survey research design, data were collected by means of a questionnaire that was sent via SurveyMonkey to the members of an HR professional body in South Africa, namely the South African Board of People Practices (SABPP). The selection criterion for this study was SABPP members who worked in industry, not in academia, or who were self-employed. The reason for this decision was to obtain the views of HRM practitioners who dealt with HR issues in the workplace. Human resource management academics would not have been able to answer some of the questions because of the actual execution of certain HRM functions. The profiles of the respondents are shown in Table 1.

It is interesting to note that more females than males participated in this study. With reference to age groups, most of the participants fell within the 35–44 years age group, followed by individuals in the 45–54 years age group, which could be an indication that HR practitioners in these age groups seem to be enthusiastic about the future of HRM studies. With respect to the area of specialisation, more than half of the respondents specialised in HRM. This could be an indication that human resource development (HRD), labour relations management (LRM), and other areas of specialisation such as organisational development, vocational rehabilitation, HR generalist (HRM, HRD and LRM included), safety and risk management, and HR information systems are occupied in smaller numbers in the South African context. Of the respondents, 55.6% worked in the private sector and 32.3% worked in the public sector, whilst 12.1% worked in other sectors related to state-owned enterprises. This could be a signifier that the majority of the SABPP members worked in the private sector. Lastly, most of the respondents possessed a certificate or a diploma and therefore postgraduate qualifications does not seem to be of the essence to these HR practitioners.

For the purpose of this study, the abbreviated self-leadership questionnaire (Houghton et al., 2012), the short version of the work engagement questionnaire of Schaufeli et al. (2006), and a new questionnaire based on the work of Schultz (2017) to measure future HRM were used. Examples of the items used to measure each of the three variables were as follows:

Future HRM:

Work engagement:

Self-leadership:

A five-point Likert scale (1 – never; 2 – almost never; 3 – about half of the time; 4 – most of the time; 5 – all the time) was used for all the questionnaire items. Face validity was ensured by conducting a pilot test with 16 HRM, HRD and LRM specialists. These managers had 5 years’ experience or more as an HRM, HRD or LRM specialist. Content validity was determined by having the questionnaire reviewed by nine HRM, HRD and LRM academics. These academics possessed a doctoral degree in the relevant field of expertise and a minimum of 5 years’ experience as an academic. These experts reviewed the language, structure and design of the questionnaire. Construct validity was ensured by conducting a principal factor analysis. To progress to factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was determined. It was 0.865 for work engagement, 0.796 for self-leadership and 0.811 for the future of HRM. The factor analysis confirmed the theoretical sub-scales, namely, work engagement (vigour, absorption and dedication) and the future of HRM (analytical skills, future workspace and employment relations), except for self-leadership, which was grouped into a two-factor solution (factor 1: behaviour awareness, volition and task motivation and factor 2: constructive cognition). All these factors were discussed in the literature review.

The reliability coefficients for the future HRM questionnaire are not available because this is a newly developed questionnaire. According to Mahembe, Engelbrecht and Wakelin (2017), the Cronbach’s alphas for the self-leadership questionnaire were as follows: behaviour awareness and volition = 0.66, task motivation = 0.68, and constructive cognition = 0.54. In the study of Gautam and Enslin (2019), the overall Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89. The Cronbach’s alphas for work engagement according to Choi, Suh, Choi, Lee and Son (2020) were as follows: vigour = 0.63, dedication = 0.65, absorption = 0.56. Kanten and Sadullah (2012) found that absorption’s Cronbach’s alpha was 0.84 and for vigour and for dedication the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89.

In this study, scale reliability was measured using Cronbach’s alpha. The alpha readings are presented in Table 2.

Feinberg, Kinnearz and Taylor (2013) suggested that the acceptable level for measuring the reliability of an instrument is 0.7. Table 2 indicates that all alpha readings were above the recommended 0.7 value. The scales used in this study were reliable or internally consistent. For this study, it was decided to keep the employment relations factor with its 0.634 reliability coefficient because composite reliability values of 0.60–0.70 are acceptable in exploratory research (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994).

The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 24) was used to analyse the numeric data in the study. Pearson correlation was conducted to determine the significant relationships; and multiple regression analysis was used to determine the predictions. According to Hayes (2009), mediation is a sequence of causal relations by which variable X exerts its effect on variable Y by influencing intervening variables. The mediation role of work engagement between the future of HRM and self-leadership was investigated.

The SABPP gave permission to the researcher for conducting the study. Ethical permission for this study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of the Tshwane University of Technology, Ref#: FCRE2018/FR/10/025-MS. High ethical standards were followed in all aspects of the research process. All possible respondents were provided with an overview of the study before inviting them to voluntarily participate. The respondents were assured that their responses would be anonymous and confidential, and were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any stage should they feel it necessary to do so. All respondents indicated their consent on SurveyMonkey.

The fact that the respondents in this study almost never agreed with the statements about self-leadership, the future of HRM and work engagement could be an indication that they did not see themselves as being self-led, engaged and ready for the future of HRM with specific reference to their analytical skills, future workspace and employment relations. It is however not clear. From a practical point of view, the theorising and results of the study are applicable to HR managers and HR practitioners. The measure of the future of HRM is comprised of items that measure specific HR behaviours. Thus, the results from the study could be used to train, coach and mentor HR managers and HR practitioners to promote preparation for the future of HRM, be self-led and be more engaged. In order to ensure a practical impact, training, coaching and mentoring should focus on how to be self-led, how to be engaged in the future world of work, how to improve HR’s analytical skills and employment relations, as well as how to design future workspace.

Engagement related to improving employment relations is also essential. The critical connection between work engagement and self-leadership could help direct organisations toward improving, maintaining and refining HR managers’ and HR practitioners’ ability to lead themselves and be more engaged. This can be done by creating an awareness and providing training sessions on how to improve one’s work engagement and self-leadership. These two abilities will assist HR with the successful transition into the future of work. In dealing with I4.0 challenges, the ability of HR practitioners to lead themselves and be engaged in their work will affect the future of HRM.

The cognitive component of work engagement, which is often interchangeable with the absorption dimension, is characterised by being fully concentrated and happily engrossed in work, and feeling such as time flying when working. This relates to cognition (positive thought patterns) as part of self-leadership. Behavioural strategies such as self-reward, self-cueing, self-observation, self-punishment, self-goal setting, self-correcting feedback and practice should be encouraged to improve positive and desirable behaviours. Vigour, which relates to high levels of energy and mental resilience experienced, should be encouraged even in cases where performance in the future may be challenging. Dedication is characterised by strong involvement in one’s work, which results in positive feelings about work, such as pride and inspiration. Human resources practitioners should be made aware of this quality to maintain or improve their dedication.

As with all studies, there are limitations to the present study. A limitation in this study is that it was cross-sectional in nature and can therefore not be generalised to all HR practitioners. The sample was comprised of members of a professional HR body in only one country. Therefore, it is suggested that professional HR bodies from other countries also be involved in a similar study. Additionally, researchers would be well served to consider research in different workplaces, such as tertiary institutions, private companies and government departments. Another limitation is that this study relied on only three factors (analytical skills, future workspace and employment relations) as part of the future of HRM. There is a need to investigate more future HRM factors such as technology readiness, agile leadership and future HRM competencies to form a holistic view of the future of HRM and how to prepare for it. Another limitation is that I4.0 was mentioned as a background scene for this article, and its role or impact in relation to self-leadership, work engagement and the future of HRM was not investigated.

It is recommended that organisations support, train and develop HR practitioners to be future-fit. Constant learning and upskilling are no longer differentiators, but rather necessities if HR practitioners want to keep themselves relevant in this changing landscape. Human resources practitioners, therefore, also have a responsibility to ensure that they are able to lead themselves, be engaged in their work and prepare for the future of HRM. The ability to communicate, connect and establish relationships is very important. With respect to self-leadership, their task motivation links with their work engagement, which is an indication of a positive motivational state.

A research idea is that future researchers can attempt to replicate or test the findings of this study longitudinally. Although further research can, of course, provide additional validity to the conclusions that have been drawn here, it is suggested that the next step should be a qualitative approach and Delphi technique to obtain rich data about HR practitioners being self-managed, engaged and prepared for the future world of work. Line management, subordinates, peers and clients of HR practitioners can also be included in such a study to obtain a holistic view about HR practitioners as being self-led, engaged in their work and prepared for the future. As discussed in the above section, the respondents almost never agreed with the statements about self-leadership, the future of HRM and work engagement. This could be an indication that they did not see themselves as being self-led, engaged and ready for the future of HRM, with specific reference to their analytical skills, future workspace and employment relations. This needs further investigation by using a qualitative study, for example, to obtain rich data as to why respondents did not perceive themselves as being self-led, engaged in their work and future HRM-fit. Other studies can also be conducted to determine whether HR practitioners in different industries of South Africa and other countries also perceive themselves to not be self-led, engaged in their work or future-fit, with specific reference to their analytical skills, future workspace and employment relations.

Future research should examine the future of HRM in relation to other leadership styles, such as authentic leadership, agile leadership and leadership 4.0. Future research should also investigate other types of engagement, such as employee engagement, which focuses on the cognitive, affective and behavioural levels of a person. Future work should aim to better understand how the future of HRM interacts with leadership and engagement. In this study, the future HRM factors, namely analytical skills, future workspace and employment relations, were used. In further studies, other types of future HRM factors should be examined in terms of their relationship to self-leadership and work engagement. Self-leadership, work engagement and the future of HRM may positively impact I4.0, but this needs to be investigated scientifically. Overall, more research is needed to ensure that HRM will be relevant and add value in I4.0.

This article aimed to bridge the gap in the literature by exploring whether self-leadership and work engagement influenced the future of HRM. This study provided evidence of the relationship between self-leadership, the future of HRM and work engagement. The article concluded by arguing that the role of work engagement and self-leadership is critical to our understanding of the future of HRM. Taken together, these results produced new knowledge to better prepare for the future of HRM. Further research needs to continue to examine the nexus between self-leadership, the future of HRM and work engagement. Organisations need to support, train and develop HR practitioners to be future-fit. With I4.0 at our doorstep, it is expected that this study will encourage researchers to conduct more research about the future of HRM.