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Internal workplace coaches are employees who, in addition to their main job, volunteer to provide coaching to work colleagues who are not their direct reports. The purpose of this paper is to explore what motivates these individuals to volunteer to be an internal workplace coach and to continue carrying out the role.

To explore the experiences of internal coaches, a questionnaire was devised and issued; it attracted 484 responses – the largest survey response to date from this population. Following analysis of the questionnaire data, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 internal coaches from private, public and not-for-profit UK organisations. The responses were analysed in relation to motivation theory, principally self-determination theory.

Individuals were motivated to volunteer for the role, and to continue to practise as coaches, in the most part to satisfy intrinsic needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy. The research presents rich information about how coaches perceived these needs were satisfied by coaching. In general, there were only moderate or poor levels of support and recognition for individual coaches within their organisation, indicating limited extrinsic motivation.

The practical implications are that organisations can draw on the findings from this study to motivate individuals to volunteer to be internal coaches and to continue to act in that role.

Many organisations use internal coaches, but there is very little research into what motivates these volunteers.

Remote working has brought forward many challenges for employees as the phenomenon is still new for most employees across the globe. Some of these challenges may be addressed by the recent adoption of digital technologies by organizations. In this vein, our study explores the impact of digital platform capability on the creativity of employees through the mediating mechanism of explicit and tacit knowledge sharing.

The data were gathered from higher education institutes (HEIs) in a developing country, Pakistan which recently saw a major disruption during the Covid-19 pandemic. The proposed hypotheses were tested through Structural Equational Modeling (SEM) and the results confirmed our hypotheses.

The findings confirmed that the digital platform capabilities impact both tacit and explicit knowledge sharing among these remote employees. Likewise, the results also supported the mediating role of both explicit and tacit knowledge sharing on the creativity of these remote workers.

Our results are significant as they confirm the impact of digitalization on remote workers’ creativity predisposition. We thus advance the academic debate on the problems of knowledge sharing in remote working. We prove that digital capabilities outweigh the challenges created due to new forms of work driven by the pandemic. It further highlights the important areas to focus on while planning human resource policies in the new normal.

Migration is on the rise due to globalization and human mobility. This has led to increased impacts that have affected many industries, including the construction industry. A large number of migrants are employed in the construction sector, and employers are challenged to make sure all employees are properly integrated to meet the demands needed for construction projects. This article addresses key differences between migrant and native workers to help hiring departments in the construction industry analyse workers' attitudes based on cultural and motivational factors to have the workforce they need to succeed.

The research used both quantitative and qualitative surveys. A two-part questionnaire, designed through a comprehensive literature review, was carried out to identify key differences between native and migrant workers. The data were obtained and then analysed using different statistical approaches, including factor analysis protocol, factor structure model, reliability analysis, relative importance index and nonparametric test analysis. A semi-structured interview was then conducted to discuss all the findings.

The study indicated that migrant workers, compared to natives, tend to give more importance to their working environment, particularly accommodation, work safety and relations with teammates. Also, migrants typically take a socialistic approach instead of an individual approach while at work and reveal an extensive range of behaviours based on a sense of belonging. It might be more important for migrants to have a place in society, to have a settled life and to be integrated into an established order than to improve their rights and benefits. On the other hand, the study argued that native workers tend to prioritize their benefits at work, such as regular payments for overtime and insurance premiums. Their behaviours might carry a more neutral and individual attitude as well as specific cultural traces.

The study is limited to a sample of participants in the Turkish construction sector. Further research based on more cultural models and motivational factors with a larger group of respondents from different countries could offer better results. The results of the study might not apply to a broad context due to many other factors that affect worker behaviours, such as geography, cultural structures and working conditions. Despite these drawbacks, the present paper may help employers and other stakeholders understand the best way to incorporate migrants into the construction industry.

This research is very important for the construction industry in various countries that are currently employing thousands of migrants. Being able to address the key differences between migrants and native workers based on cultural and motivational factors might help with engagement and create a level of harmony in the field for greater productivity.