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The idea of the psychological contract was first applied, further enhanced and described along with its speedily developing and its essential role in indulgent the mutual expectations of both employees and employers. The psychological contract is an active and implicit thing that constantly supports to improve the relationship and connection between the employee and the employer (Cañibano, 2019).

Psychological Contract has turned out as the vision, explanations, opinions, ideas, as well as expectations of both employers and employees that shape up their shared accountabilities and obligations to one another. “The obligation can possibly be the expectations, promises and commitments made by one party to another with the intention of forming a good relationship.” (Guest, Trust and the role of the psychological contract in contemporary employment relations, 2016). Even though this psychological contract is not an authorized contract, but still, this contract has been considered to become more powerful if compared to the other written contracts. The reason is due to this contract has a mutual indulgent between both parties involved. The worth mentioning point of ‘Psychological Contract’ is that both parties that involved are obligatory to complete their duties, which are not identified on their job agreement.

            Oman Air has been listed as one of the big companies that follow the globalization that appears in the business market industry of Oman. For this reason, the company has also provided a psychological contract for its entire employees. This report will discuss around the relationship between flexible working and psychological contracts in Oman Air.

Psychological Contract in Oman Air

Oman Air was founded in 1933, and ever since then, the airline company has been maintaining an extremely high standard of professionalism in the working place. Along with the trend of globalization, the Government of Oman has announced the Omanization. Omanization is actually a set of policies sanctioned by Oman’s government in the year of 1988, with the purpose of replacing expatriate employees with the trained and qualified Omani employees. The psychological contract is included in this Omanization as an essential point that should be applied by all the companies that doing business in Oman, as well as Oman Air (Khan, Rajasekar, & Al-Asfour, 2015).

Actually, the theory of psychological contract is quite relevant due to it seizures and gives a detail explanation around the different beliefs of the mutual responsibilities that appear between the employees and employer (Coyle‐Shapiro & Kessler, 2000). All of these responsibilities typically define each employee’s knowledge of their contributions in the contexts of loyalty, effort, and also the working attitudes. In addition to this, the psychological contract theory presents the employee’s perception of how the company should give their privileges in the contexts of payment, security, as well as promotion. On the other hand, the company also acquires an authentic perspective within the employee-employer relationship.

Same as in other companies, the psychological contract will start to be constructed by the management of Oman Air in the pre-employment stages (Abdullah, 2017). This contract will be developed throughout the time in accordance with the expectations of mutual responsibilities between the employees and the management of Oman Air. Thus, the actions and interactions derived from the management over the selection and training processes are all underwrite to arrange all of the expectations in future employees.  A few months over the employment processes will be involved in forming the employee’s perceptions of mutual responsibilities along with the expectations that the company has regarding their performance. Even though the psychological contract might be easily broken once it has formed, but this type of contract has been considered as a far less easily reestablished to support the expectations of both employees and also employer  (Schalk & Roe, 2007) .

The main aspects of the psychological contract formation in Oman Air are related to the concern around the broad situations such as the level of salaries, the working hours, as well as the job insecurity. Salaries and hours have been considered as tangible, in which job insecurity is a point where the employees trust the company, and thus, it needs to be existed. For this reason, since all of the employees have right to negotiate some agreements on behalf of their careers, the psychological contract has turned out to become quite active as the nature of the preserved obligation along with the expectations between the employees’ and employers will always change throughout the time (Guest, The psychology of the employment relationship: An analysis based on the psychological contract, 2004).

Moreover, the flexible working practice has been considered as the most essential feature of the psychological contract. In addition to job commitment, the employees also have their own life, family, and also social commitments. This situation appears to be an issue that sometimes challenging and inciting the management of Oman Air to deal with its entire employees. In such conditions, the application of flexible working procedures in gaining the human capital could play a significant role to tackle down such conditions and attain the best solution, in which both the employee and management will win and get what they want. This is aligned with the explanation “Upholding flexible working hours and meeting the commitments are likely to create a friendly, welcoming, cordial and responsive work organization that assist employees deal with and manage the practicalities and strain of work/ family conflicts”. Employees’ views on positive relationship with front line managers tend to have higher level of job satisfaction, work commitment and loyalty, which in turn result in yielding higher level of performance.” (Guest, Trust and the role of the psychological contract in contemporary employment relations, 2016)Thus, the involvement performed by the employee along with their participation is a topic to discuss that to what degree the perception of this psychological contract fulfilled by the management or employers. Only with the best performance, then there will be a big opportunity for both employee and employer to remain stick to the contract formed and also obey the contract all the time. A study has even specified that psychological contract has the capability to remove the wrong assumptions come from the employee around their duties and obligations at their working place, besides that developing good relationship with their employers as well (Cullinane & Dundon, 2006).

As mentioned above, that Oman Air has listed in the companies that apply the new policies included in Omanization, specifically the psychological contract, however, it has occurred that the company unfortunately still unable to practice the flexible working properly to all of its employees. This has approved by some of employees who have been complaining that they cannot have enough time for their family or social life. This is a big concern that needed to be solved by Oman Air since any type of company must apply the flexible working as a strategic instrument to get the improvement of its employees which will lead to the organizational performance as well. In fact, Guest (2004) has suggested that “reinstating employees’ trust is an important matter for employers nowadays. This can be restored by considering and evaluating the needs and wants of the employees, satisfying their expectations and maintaining a mutual understanding & relationship between employers and employees. Psychological contract is an effort to build a pivotal relationship between employers and employees based on their mutual expectations.” (Guest, 2004)

Moreover, Oman Air also needs to recognize that any violation of psychological contract will potentially trigger to ruin up the employment relations, and will definitely influence the success of the company as well. One thing to be noted here is that, the foundation of this psychological contract is trust along with the resilient emotional response.

Conclusion and Recommendations of Flexible Working & Psychological Contract in Oman Air

From the explanation above, we can conclude that Oman Air has been doing the effort to take part in Omanization and apply the psychological contract. However, the company is still unable to perform flexible working, which is the most essential feature of psychological contract. This situation appears to be an issue that sometimes challenging and inciting the management of Oman Air to deal with its entire employees. In this situation, some recommendations for Oman Air to be applied are such as:

·         The psychological contract that made should be clear, achievable, quantifiable, and also realistic which will strengthen the psychological contract itself

·         Oman Air also should realize the importance to apply flexible working and add it into the psychological contract to maintain the job satisfaction of its entire employees, which will lead to the performance improvement of the company itself.

·         Oman Air should take the feedback of its employees to make sure about their job satisfaction and consider it into the psychological contract that will able to create strong relationship between the employees and the company

References of Flexible Working & Psychological Contract in Oman Air