BUILDING EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT AT WORK

‘HRM policies are designed to maximize organizational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work’.

GUEST D.E

INTRODUCTION

Employees are the backbone of any organisation. They are the drivers of superior organisational performance. Despite the fact that computer and IT have revolutionized the work place, people are still needed to programme and operate the computers in order to get the desirable result.

Low levels of commitment to both the organisation and work have been linked to absenteeism, employee turnover and intention to quit. The success of any organisation in achieving its objectives is dependent on the level of commitment of its employees to both the organisation and its various goals. This shows that building employees’ commitment to the workplace is one important goal of human resource policies and practices.

Organisations that want to remain competitive in a dynamic-complex business environment of today must make building employee commitment at work a top priority.  

THE CONCEPT OF EMPLOYEECOMMITMENT

There is no universal definition of commitment. Authors, researchers and scholars define the concept to suit their interest and purpose. Some common definitions of employee commitment are given below.

1. Commitment is a state of mind in which an individual becomes bound by his actions to beliefs that sustain his activities and his own involvement (Salancik, 1977).
2. Commitment is willingness on the part of individuals to contribute much more to the organisation than their formal contractual obligation (Martin and Nicholas, 1987).
3. Organizational commitment may also be defined as the psychological affiliation of an employee to the organization (Chen et al., 2002).

IMPACT OF EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT

The results of high employee commitment to work and organisation are so numerous. Some of them are listed below.

          i.            Enhanced performance.

        ii.            Increased productivity.

      iii.            Increased employee motivation.

      iv.            Loyalty to the organisation.

        v.            High morale.

      vi.            Job satisfaction.

    vii.            Low turnover and absenteeism.

FACTORS AFFECTING EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT

There are so many factors that are capable of influencing the level of employee commitment at work, positively. Management should ensure that these factors are put into consideration in designing strategies for eliciting employee commitment at work. These factors include the following.

1. Availability and satisfaction with career opportunities.
2. Excellent relationship with peers, supervisors, and management.
3. Presence of work-life balance.
4. Satisfaction with company performance.
5. Employees’ confidence of their future with the organisation.
6. Opportunities for continuous learning and improvement.
7. Degree of teamwork and cooperation.
8. Employees’ confidence in the future success of the company.
9. Excellent and competitive remuneration policy.
10. Evaluative and objective measures of performance.

BUILDING EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT

Building employee commitment to the workplace is one important goal of human resource policies and practices. Research over the years revealed that commitment has a positive effect on productivity, turnover and willingness to help co-workers.

Several ways of building employee commitment at work include the following.

Fair treatment

 Excellent grievance procedure that guarantees fair treatment of all employees in all grievance and disciplinary matters must be in place.

People first-value    

To build committed workforce organisations should emphasise ideas that portray employees as the most valued assets. Employees must be trusted, treated with respect, involved in making on-the-job decisions, and encouraged to grow and reach their full potential.

 Employment security

Practice lifetime employment without guarantees. Make stable employment and continual improvement of your team members or employees your strategy to obtain the smooth, steady growth of the company. This may be difficult in this era of global economic meltdown induced staff retrenchment. Staff retrenchment must be undertaken with human face. Retrenched employees entitlements must be fully paid. Unless this is done, those left behind will never be committed. All efforts must be geared towards ensuring that employees have confidence in their future with the organisation.

 Excellent Reward package

In addition to offering employees competitive total reward packages, organisations should build a pay plan that encourages employees to think of themselves as partners. This means employees should have healthy share of the profits and downturn during good years and bad years respectively. Stock ownership plan can also be encouraged to make employees major stakeholders in the business.

Value based hiring

Commitment should be embedded in companies’ activities right from start. They must demonstrate to potential employees at the point of entry that, they are organisation committed to employees’ welfare, career progression, learning and growth. Self-selection can also be utilized, exhaustive screening process that requires some sacrifice on the part of the employees should also be encouraged to create a commitment atmosphere.

Build excellent brand and solid reputation

There are some business organisations today that do receive thousands of unsolicited applications due to their image, policies, programmes, ideologies and level of profitability. These are organisations that several millions of people are willing to work in and grow.  Companies like GSK, Shell, IBM, Infosys, and Procter & Gamble consider their ‘employment brand’ and ‘reputation’ as key asset in attracting and retaining skilled, competent, committed and motivated people.

The truth about commitment is that people are more interested in working in well established organisations with global brand and excellent reputation. Build your brand and reputation to build committed workforce.

Strong commitment to training and development

To build commitment, there should be a great emphasis on, and investment in, training and development. There should be a deliberate commitment of significant resources to the training and development of employees at work.

Groom-from-within philosophy/Promote-from-within policy

Organisations that practices groom-from-within philosophy are populated by committed people. In such organisations talent development through training and retraining of staff is accorded the greatest priority. If there is a job vacancy, first of all candidates will be sought locally, but if

no one is available; candidates will be sought across a region or across the world.

Groom-from-within philosophy succeed  best in an atmosphere where managers act as coaches or mentors and also encourage people to move around within the organisation for career development purposes rather than holding on to the best talents.

Conclusion

Employees are the backbone of any organisation. Their commitment to work and organisation

Will produce positive results in terms of high productivity, desirable behaviour, increased loyalty, high morale, job satisfaction, low turnover and absenteeism.

References

Chen ZX, Tsui AS, Farh JL (2002). Loyalty to supervisor vs. organizational commitment: Relationships to employee performance in China. J. Occup. Organ. Psychol., 75: 339-356.

Guest, D E (1987). Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, Journal of Management Studies, 14(5), pp 503-21.

Jennifer Shu-Jen Lin, She-Cheng Lin, Ben-Yuan Lin (2010). The moderating effects of employee personality characteristics on organizational commitment during periods of organizational change. African Journal of Business Management Vol. 4(17), pp. 3681-3690.

Martin, P and Nicholas, J (1987). Creating a committed workforce. London: IPM Publications.

Salancik, G R (1977). Commitment and control of organisational behaviour and belief, in New Directions in Organizational Behaviour, ed B M  Staw and G R Salancik, St Clair Press, Chicago.

About the writer

Ajiboro Ayodeji is a Chartered HR Practitioner based in Lagos, Nigeria. Tel: 2348027807452. Email: hutrenconsulting@gmail.com.

©Hutren Consulting 2011

WORKING BEST WITH PEOPLE

‘People are more likely to be motivated if they work in an environment in which they are valued for what they are and what they do.’

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG

INTRODUCTION

The brain behind the success or failure of any business organisation are the people working there, whose individual and collective efforts determine the achievement of its short, medium and long term objectives. To achieve organisational objectives, people need to be understood, managed and motivated in such a way that they can willingly put in their best possible effort towards the achievement of organisational objectives.

The management approach and styles applied by organisations in managing their workforce go a long way in determining the employees’ level of commitment to their work and organisation. To be able to manage workforce for result, managers must have a detailed knowledge of individual differences, personalities, orientations and roles.

Company management and managers must be familiar with the characteristics of people in terms of individual differences. They should know that there are no two similar individuals. Even DNA has proved this to be real and true. Managers should expect variation in individual’s performance and behaviour at work because people differ in terms of abilities, intelligence, background, personality, race and culture. The knowledge of these differences will go along way in helping company management and managers to manage their workforce optimally.

FACTORS FOR CONSIDERATION

 To work best with people, managers at work should be adept at people’s management. They should be familiar with those factors and characteristics that distinguish an individual from several others. These factors include individual’s ability, level of intelligent, background and culture, ability and personality.

 ABILITY

All employees at work are different in terms of ability. Ability is the quality that makes an action possible. Abilities vary and could be verbal, numerical, memory, reasoning, spatial and mechanical abilities. A skillful manager is expected to know the strengths and weaknesses of his subordinates in terms of variation in their ability to contribute to the achievement of the company’s objectives. Managers should utilize each of his subordinates in their most noticeable area of strength. It’s easier to work best with employees when we know their area of strengths and capitalize more on these areas.

 LEVEL OF INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence means different things to different people. Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand and think in a logical way about things. It is the capacity to solve problems, think and reason abstractly, process information, apply principles, make inferences and perceive relationships. The level of intelligent of people at work differs. This should be clear enough to all superiors at work. While some employees are good at drawing inferences, others are good at solving problems through abstract thinking and reasoning. The onus is on the superior at work to recognise the area where an employee can perform best and fix him up appropriately.

BACKGROUND AND CULTURE

The environment in which people were brought up goes along way in molding their perception and value in life. Peoples social-cultural environment, roles and relationships, opportunities and constraints encountered in their life journey are very crucial in determining how they perceive relationship and take decisions. Managers should learn to relate well with employees and motivate them optimally by having an incline into their background and culture. 

PERSONALITY

Men are different in terms of their personality. Individuals at work exhibit different kinds of behaviour based on their personality traits. They exhibit the big five personality traits of ‘Deary and Matthew’ such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, extraversion and neuroticism. Managers should have a clear understanding of individual differences in terms of their different personalities and therefore manage them in such a way as to get the best out of them.

ATTITUDE

The attitudes of people at work are also fundamental to their effective and efficient management at work. Attitudes are developed through experience and can change as new experiences are gained or influences absorbed. An Attitude can be defined as an individuals settled mode of thinking. Managers should learn to understand individual’s attitude and then put in place machinery to identify and modify those attitudes exhibited by employees at work that are capable of affecting personal and team productivity on the job.

 WORKING ENVIRONMENT

The environment at which people work can impact either positively or negatively on their productivity. The work environment is a combination of physical environment, behaviour of colleagues and leaders, company policies, reward system and job characteristics. The physical and social environment of the organisation must be conducive to get the best out of employees.

CONCLUSION

Management is all about getting things done through people. To get the best result from people as individual and as a team, they must be understood by their superiors as being different, one from another. Men are product of divers’ background, personality, ability and intelligence. Therefore employees should be managed and motivated with the view that no two individuals are the same.

References:

Argyle, M (1989): The Social Psychology of Work, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Armstrong, M (2003):  A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 9^th edn, Kogan Page, London.

Burt, C (1954): The differentiation of intellectual ability, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 24, pp 45-67.

Deary, I.J and Matthews, G (1993): Personality traits are alive and well, The Psychologist, 6, pp 299-311.

About the author

Ajiboro Ayodeji is a Chartered HR Practitioner based in Lagos, Nigeria. Tel: 2348027807452. Email: hutrenconsulting@gmail.com.