Employee social sustainability : prioritizing dimensions in the UAE’s airlines industry

Purpose: This paper aims to identify and prioritize the dimensions that impact employee social sustainability in the airline industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Design/methodology/approach: The five main criteria (employee well-being, communication, management support, reward and control system and training) and 18 sub-criteria were identified from the literature. The sample comprised four experts covering the HR, finance and training functions from a major UAE airline organization. Applying the analytical-hierarchy-process (AHP) methodology resulted in obtaining priority weights for the factors assigned to employee-social-sustainability implementation. Findings: Management support was found to have the highest priority among the study dimensions impacting employee social sustainability. Surprisingly, reward system was found to be the least important dimension. Research limitations/implications: The study was carried out on a single airline organization, limiting the generalizability of the findings. Future studies should be extended to cater to different organizational contexts and varying operational conditions. Practical implications: The findings should be of value to human resource management and policymakers in developing countries, such as the UAE, where employee social sustainability should be sought as a means to develop an efficient and sustainable workforce in different industrial sectors. Originality/value: This study is among the few pioneering studies that focus on employee social sustainability. The use of AHP to prioritize employee-social-sustainability dimensions is also considered pioneering within the field and is anticipated to support future studies, and a deeper understanding, of employee social sustainability.