Companies take steps towards understanding employee commitment.

Your organization grows in spirals. It grows well for a certain period, and all visible signs of productivity,
innovation, and customer orientation are good. Good employees are not leaving you, your deliveries are
okay, customers are placing repeat orders to indicate their general comfort with you, and your stock is
also doing well. But the industry and stock market sees you as an organization in the so-called tier 2,
composed of mid-size IT firms growing either at the industry average rate or a tad lower. In other words,
not a star, but not a laggard either.

Assignment
Consulting assignment with two organizations that wanted to move from tier 2 to tier 1 in two to three
years. During this assignment, we developed a tool for diagnosing employee commitment. Both firms
wanted to use increased employee commitment levels as a major tool to catapult themselves into tier 1.
One succeeded, and the other fared just about average.

Background
Both of the organizations recognized that unless all the employees put their shoulders to the wheel, the
movement into tier 1 was going to be difficult and would take much longer to achieve.

Firm A was into niche segments and focused business on what could be called high-end IT and product
R&D services. It developed embedded systems software, software tools, and mobile applications on
technology such as WAP. It had more than 500 employees but with a relatively weaker marketing setup.
It was led by a technical person and managed mostly at the executive level by people known more for
their technical skills than their business skills. It had grown quite easily so far, due to its product and
delivery differentiation.

Firm B, with more than 600 employees and similar revenues to Firm A, was into the mass IT markets but
focused on the enterprise applications market by going after implementations, systems maintenance,
and high-end system integration work. It pushed toward on-site work due to the attractiveness of higher
billing rates. It targeted three to four major business verticals and had a business/marketing savvy team
at the helm.

Pillars of building commitment

Our experience and industry literature suggest that employee commitment can be measured by the two
Rs: retention (whether the employee retains himself or herself in the organization due to positive
reasons), and recommendation (whether the employee thinks highly enough of the organization to
recommend to others that they join).
We went about interviewing both firms' employees in informal settings, starting with the leaders, trying
to conclude what would be the engines for reaching high levels of retention and recommendation.

We found that an employee is likely to be far more committed to a firm if the following three
commitment pillars or engines are nurtured.on of your role.

 The employee's assessment of the quality of the company's leadership is high. We realized that
employee commitment can't just be built "bottom up." Some leaders think they can delegate
their role in building commitment to the supervisors or managers below. That's not delegation,
but an abrogation of your role.
 The employees' evaluation of the development opportunities available within their organization
is high. As a leader, before you expect your employees to be committed to the organization's
cause, you display your commitment to them. There's no better way to do this than by providing
them with opportunities to develop their abilities and skills, and allowing them to realize their
creative potential. When companies invest in their people, their people invest in them. It's a
two-way road.
 The employees' judgment of whether they are sufficiently empowered to carry out their work
effectively is high. High-commitment organizations feel free to vest authority in their employees.
Employees are made to feel free to express their views or exercise their initiative. Companies
achieve high levels of commitment not by telling employees what or how to think, but by
listening to what they have to say.

Lessons from the experience

Here are conclusions that we drew after studying these two companies.

Employees want to see a connection between what they do and the larger realities in the
industry. Both firms provided opportunities for the employees to work on the latest technologies,
but Firm B managed to communicate the "connect" of what employees were doing with the industry
developments. Firm A could communicate that to only a few people at the top who could see the
commercial impact of the breakthroughs they were making. Others were lost in their own small but
exciting technical "well," which every few months would run dry.

Employees are keen to see who among the ranks—top management or the middle managers—
talks about commitment. Building people is a line responsibility—top management has to accept
that expending energy is part of their job. Firm B ensured that this culture was part of all line
managers' jobs, but Firm A expected the HR department to be a major catalyst in this process. Since
the HR department is not in a close working relationship with employees, it was able to do an
honest but superficial job.

Employees want to see leaders who can walk their talk. Convincingly holding forth the mission,
vision, and core values of the company is a necessary condition, but not sufficient. It should
percolate in a top-down manner. For instance, Firm B named one of the values as "transparency in
all we do." Failures were openly discussed, admitted, and no one was made to feel that it was a
personal failure. Firm A was different. Failures, especially when they happened at middle or junior
levels, often resulted in finger-pointing and responsibility fixing. So there was one rule for the senior
group and another for the rest. This caused a mindset divide between the "leaders" and the "led."

Employees want to see how lack of commitment is handled. How does the organization deal with
the lack of employee commitment? Firm B developed a method of handling this. Employees lacking
in commitment were counseled in a one-to-one setting, which was then escalated to small group
briefings where polite censures were used. All this time, if skill or knowledge was a problem, training
was provided to allow the employee to do better. Firm A wrapped itself up in lobby-oriented
handling of these less-committed employees.

Employees don't want to trade their future for their present. Firm B provided their employees with
an open and clear roadmap about how they would do in the industry, even if they left the firm, by
saying that the firm was "with the market" on several engagements. The message was that
employees need not commit themselves in blind faith. The majority of Firm A's middle and junior
levels felt that they would compromise their future in the industry if they committed too much of
their present to the company.

Employees don't want to climb "ant hills." If you want employees to stay committed, give them
ambitious goals. Tell them they can do it. Tell them why they can do it. Tell them it's okay if they fail
sometimes in the pursuit. Firm B realized this. Firm A was more into incremental, less-risky goal
setting.

Employees want to be told about what else they can do. They want to see that people around
them are interested in them. They then feel assured that they can do much more. Firm B kicked off
several job-rotation schemes, which had a good effect on the overall climate. Firm A was more
orthodox in its approach and wanted people to specialize and become experts in one or two areas.

Employees like to hear "let's figure this out together" before they commit themselves. Firm B
realized that people don't want a place that has "figured it all out." It provided people with
collaborative, exploratory workspaces. People don't want to follow your culture—they want to
jointly contribute in building a culture.

Employees like to work for a "happening" company. Firm B realized early that packaging the
company environment is as important as the content. The leaders constantly asked themselves what
kind of company people would want to work for. Building challenges and the ability to create
constructive confrontation is essential.
 Employees like a good "take home." Employees commit themselves more to an organization if
they're able to articulate their company's brand to their friends and family. Firm B built a bond with
a constant exchange of information, merchandise, and visits. Firm A was more straitjacketed in this
respect.

Employee commitment can be tough to understand, but it can be achieved in a gradual, transparent,
and honest manner.

ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTMENT

The concept of organisational commitment has attracted considerable attention over recent years
and has become a central objective of human resource management. As Guest, 1987 indicated,
HRM policies are designed to “maximise organisational integration,employee commitment,
flexibility and quality of work” .

For the topic in question our focal interest refers to “Commitment ” which can
be described as attachment and loyalty. Individuals can display this attachment and loyalty at a
variety of levels: their job, profession,department, boss or organisation. Realistically then,
commitment may therefore be diverse and divided between any of these.

Mowdray :-
More specifically, organisational commitment has been defined by Mowdray, 1992 as consisting
of three components: “identification with the goal’s and values of theorganisation, a desire to
belong to the organisation and a willingness to display effort on behalf of the organisation.”
This essay will therefore analyse the notion of organisational commitment, and consider its
strengths and weaknesses in determining why managers would want it in their workforce. In
addition this essay will also highlight whether there is any cost-effective way to secure
commitment.

Meyer & Allen

The term commitment can be defined in various ways. This bond has three forms:- Compliance,
Identification and Internalisation. Similarly Meyer & Allen have proposed a three-component
model, which highlights
affective commitment (individuals want to be attached to the
organisation) , continuance commitment (individuals feel they need to
be attached to the organisation) and normative commitment (individuals feel they ought to
remain with the organisation ). These various types of commitment will have varying effects on
the organisation’s performance and a person can display aspects of all of them.

Taylorism:- Hard School and Soft School of HRM

There are two schools of thought of HRM, which have had a significant effect on the importance
and development of commitment. The first one highlights the “hard ” school of HRM, which has
its origins in Taylorism. Up until the 1980’s the main concerns of management were the
organisation’s strategy and structure with an
emphasis on the technical aspects of work. People were seen as a resource to be spent like any
other. Contrary to this view is the “soft ” school of HRM. This view recognises that people are
motivated by a complex set of factors that are interrelated, such as money, the need for affiliation
or achievement and the desire for meaningful work. This view focuses on employees as potential
talents and it is
management’s responsibility to learn how best to attract and retain these resources.

Walton
A shift in the thinking and values of managers during that period was coupled with various
writers emphasising the importance of commitment i.e., such as the article written by Walton
“From control to commitment” .Walton saw a commitment strategy as a more rewarding
approach to HRM in contrast to the traditional control strategy. He suggested that workers
respond best not when they are tightly controlled by management, placed in narrowly defined
jobs and told what to do but instead when they are given broader responsibilities and encouraged
to participate.

Peters & Waterman

Writers such as Peters & Waterman, 1982, (the culture-excellence approach) focused on 8
attributes, which they said, were necessary for companies to “get their culture right”. Their main
focus was an emphasis on productivity through people.
In today’s dynamic world and increased job insecurity, the “job for life” is no longer existent.
One can therefore question whether the concept of organisational commitment is now becoming
redundant? People constantly fear their jobs and loose their motivation and commitment to work.
For example, since October,
2008, thousands of job cuts have been announced across all sectors of
the UK economy.
These include companies such as BAE Systems, Lloyds Banking Group, Japanese electronics
firm Toshiba, Royal Bank of Scotland, insurance giant Norwich Union, TelecomsCompany
Nortel and many more.

Employees need to be reassured that their jobs are secure; otherwise

they won’t exert as much effort in achieving organizational objectives. A study by the
International Survey Research revealed that British staff are the most dissatisfied in the EU, with
only 22% feeling secure in their jobs. This insecurity is the root of lack of feel good factor.

Furthermore commitment also conflicts with the notion of flexibility. Numerical flexibility has
been a predominant feature of recent years, with 'downsizing' and 'delayering' being an obsession
of many large companies. A climate of fear has been created for those people remaining.
However one must consider that even if organisations are moving towards “the flexible firm”,
nevertheless there will
always be a core group of workers and it is important to retain their commitment to the
organisation. In addition, organisations are increasingly relying on “outsourcing” to meet their
labour force requirements, by hiring temporary workers or independent contractors. This
highlights further complexities, concerning which
company the employee is committed to i.e., whether it is the organisation they were originally
employed by or the place they are currently working.

In general, writers have cited various reasons why an organisation would want to increase the
level of commitment among its members. It has been argued that having a committed workforce
is seen as the key factor in achieving competitive performance .

Research has found that the more committed the employee is to the organisation, the greater the
effort exerted by the employee in performing tasks. Highly committed employees wish to remain
associated with the organisation and advance organisational goals, and are therefore less likely to
leave (employee retention is seen to be highest with all forms of commitment). This highlights a
positive relationship between the level of organisational commitment and job tenure, which
ensures a return on the investment in careful selection, training and development. However
having a low labour turnover is not always a positive factor. For example in times of change
some turnover is desirable to bring in new people, new ideas,
and more diverse thinking. In addition, if employees with continuance commitment are staying
in the organisation because they are not able to get jobs elsewhere this won’t help the
productivity of the organisation.

Furthermore Meyer & Allen have illustrated a positively correlated

relationship between affective commitment and work attendance. In
particular “suspicious type” absences were lower i.e., a committed
worker will be more eager about their job and more motivated to
dedicate a lot of time and effort to accomplish the tasks required.
However one must bear in mind how reliable these questions are,
that simply ask the employee whether they were off work for
voluntary or involuntary reasons?
In-role job performance has been reported to be higher for employees
with strong affective commitment. The underlying assumption is
that they will work harder at their jobs and perform them better
than those with weaker commitment. This has been positively
correlated to self-reported measures of work effort and to adherence
to organisational policy. However in the presence of other studies, these results may appear
conflicting. Research undertaken by
DeCotis & Summers, 87 displayed no correlation between
performance dimensions and manager’s affective commitment. Thus
we can postulate that the association between performance and
affective commitment is neither very strong nor is the effect on
performance very large.
Hence, there seems to be a stronger association with
extra-role behaviour and affective commitment. Employees with
strong affective commitment are more willing to engage in
citizenship behaviour than those with weaker affective commitment.
Committed workers can be expected to exercise responsible autonomy
or self-control, removing the need for supervisory staff and
producing efficiency gains. Therefore commitment in the workforce
moves away from the traditional psychological contract of a “fair
days work for a fair day’s pay ” and instead to a contract, which
implies that employees will go that extra mile for the company.16
On the personal level, there are benefits for strong
affective commitment i.e., working in an environment in which one is
positive about has implications for reduced stress levels.
Alternatively, affective commitment could lead to negative
consequences for life beyond the organisation. However Meyer &
Allen have refuted this claim.
Further research has investigated the link between organisational
commitment and the delivery of service quality. Even though the link
between them is not very strong, it is found that organisational
commitment is strongly tied to role ambiguity and teamwork as
antecedents of the service delivery gap17.
Therefore obtaining affective and normative commitment from
employees may have positive effects for the organisation, even
though some of the magnitudes of the findings are not very high.
Further, one must take into consideration that in times of
organisational change, employees with affective commitment may be
a barrier to change. This is because they are committed to a single
set of values and goals and won’t be able to cope with prevalent
uncertainties and as a result may resist this change.
However organisations can increase employee commitment by
providing them with fair and reasonable working practices in a
rather cost-effective way.
To stay committed, employees should feel valued and recognised by
management. A current survey highlighted that the majority of
employees in Britain's biggest organisations feel undervalued and
1

uninvolved. The key findings showed that only 9% strongly agree

that their views and participation are valued by their organisation
and that only 27% are strongly committed to help their organisation
succeed. It also shows that low levels of commitment are portrayed
across all levels of staff: managers are only slightly more committed
than non-managers to organisational goals, and show no more
understanding of goals than their staff. 18 These are startling
results, because if managers lack commitment how can they possibly
be expected to manage and motivate others?
Good communication and feedback between management and
employees is a means to reduce these problems. Kevin Thomson
quotes: “With the one-way process of communication failing in many
UK companies, it is hardly surprising that our respondents feel
unvalued.”. A positive relationship between communication and
commitment was detected highlighting the importance for
management to ensure that communication channels remain open to
allow for better transmission of information.
Other HR practices, such as recruitment and selection, also play an
important role in gaining employee commitment (Meyer & Allen). By
providing realistic job previews and accurate information, applicants
are better able to determine whether the job is appropriate for them.
If they are aware of the available choices, applicants will be more
dedicated to the organisation that they opt for. Similarly, selection
procedures try to identify those individuals who are likely to be
committed to work. This is done through various methods such as
psychometric testing. However all individuals vary in their
propensity to become committed, due to personal characteristics, preentry
expectations or organisational choice variables.
After the initial recruitment of an employee, induction training
and socialisation are carried out, which are vital in gaining employee
commitment. It is essential to reinforce a sense of self-worth within
newcomers, which can be achieved through a supportive
environment. According to Tannenbaum, 199121, training is an
important part of the socialisation process. He found a strong
positive correlation between commitment and employee’s motivation
by the organisation.
commitment to an organisation. This can be done by providing performance appraisals, reward
for training. Training should be continuous to give employees a
Job satisfaction is said to have the largest effect on commitment.
sense of recognition and the feeling that their development is valued
Therefore, this factor should be increased to improve an employee’s
systems or benefits, which are perceived as fair and satisfactory.
Since there is a positive relationship between satisfaction with
performance appraisal and commitment22, management need to
ensure that their performance appraisal systems is perceived by
employees to be fair before they can expect higher commitment from
them. In terms of assessment and promotion, the fairness in the
decision making process is crucial for commitment. The organisation
should communicate clearly how decisions are made and why some
people and not others did get promotions.
Compensation programmes such as ESOP’s can create a sense of
commitment within the organisation. Companies, which are
by its employees), British Petroleum, (which is 100% owned by its
employees) and Pfizer. This method positively affects employee
motivation and makes them feel owners of the company. Research
suggests that companies, which have implemented ESOP’s, tend to
can also decrease affective commitment, because they require
employees to stay for a period of time to receive their contribution,
increasing costs to the organisation. In terms of pursuing a costeffective
method, consideration needs to be given to these schemes.
It is therefore possible for organisations to influence their
employees’ commitment through HRM policies and practices.
However the difficulty with these policies is that they don’t operate
in isolation and need to be compatible with the overall business
strategy. But if done effectively they can produce positive results.
For example, Huselid’s use of “High Performance Work Practices”
indicates a decrease in turnover and higher levels of productivity
and corporate financial success.
Research undertaken by John E. Finnigan, indicates that
perception of the organisations’ values is the strongest predictor of
employee commitment. This emphasises the importance for
organisations to display fairness across all their practices and
policies.
In conclusion, it’s easy for organisations to say that people are our
most important assets or the source of our competitive advantage.
But it’s much more difficult to provide evidence, especially at a time
boost employee productivity and sales growth.24 However ESOP’s
undertaking this method, are United Airlines (which is 55% owned
when downsizing is so prevalent. However by placing organisational
commitment at the core of the definition of HRM is an attempt to
“win the hearts and minds of the workforce”. We must bear in mind
that the focus of commitment “goes further than simple compliance: it is an emotional
attachment to the organisation”. Therefore the
way people are managed has a major impact on their commitment
and on organisational performance. Advantages of gaining employee
commitment have been perceived to be lower labour turnover, extra
role behaviour, better product quality and employee flexibility
leading to the firms’ competitive advantage. Thus, given the
contribution that a highly productive trained employee can make to
organisational productivity, keeping such an employee should be a
high priority to the organisation. Organisations can secure this
commitment by engaging in fair HR practices such as procedural
justice, good communication, increased participation, more
supportive management and reasonable rewards.