Four Must –Dos for Employee Commitment

The must-do’s for people management are so very obvious that anybody reading the same may find it a little too trivial. However much trivial they may appear, we all know that they are rare to be found- certainly all four of them together at the same place. If it were common place, the commitment scores for employees across organizations, across industries, across countries and continents would not be less than 50% year after year, survey after survey. Rare is the organization which is able to muster employee commitment score higher than 50% regardless of the survey that it may choose to use. This basically implies that more than half the employees in most organizations are committed to working in that organization- the definition of “commitment” can vary depending on the particular survey being used, but broadly the term connotes intrinsic motivation of employees to the job that they are performing. A committed employee is the one who is able, willing and will go full nine yards in ensuring that she delivers beyond the usual expectation from her role.

Employee commitment is being measured by organizations for the last several years since the earlier measures of employee morale did not often correlate with tangible results for the organization. The term “Commitment” is supposed to be a higher order of motivation towards the job and the organization than “engagement” which broadly denotes the extent to which employees felt a sense of belongingness to the organization they work for. Prior to “engagement”, organizations used to measure “satisfaction” which denoted the extent to which employees felt satisfied with the work that they were doing. The challenge was that while the employees may be satisfied with where they were working, their heart was not in there and hence a high score on employee satisfaction did not often result in tangible results for the organization even on the people front (for instance employee turnover), let alone its impact being felt on business results. Therefore, organizations decided to look beyond mere satisfaction of employees into their engagement with the organization. The scores on engagement were usually lower than those for satisfaction for most organizations as they shifted the measurement criteria. The explanation was quite straight forward – while an employee may be satisfied with her job, she did not feel included in the organization as an integral part of the same and hence did not quite find herself engaged with the organization. In other words, even if the hygiene factors were all taken care of (and hence the satisfaction with the job), there was nothing which kind of motivated the employee to feel an integral part of the organization. Though engagement scores were lower than the earlier satisfaction scores, they did improve over a period of time. Nevertheless, the correlation of the same with even business results was very hard to establish, even if one existed. Therefore, while the employee engagement scores moved northwards, several organizations found that their business results were not always following the same trajectory. Now, this was becoming a little more difficult to explain. After all, if employees were feeling an intrinsic part of the organization they were working in, why should they not go the full nine yards to deliver the results which would manifest in better business result for the organization as a whole?

The answer probably was in the difference between feeling included and having a sense of ownership. While engaged employees feel included as part of the organization, it did not necessarily guarantee that they have a sense of ownership towards the organization they were working for. The difference is not just in semantics but is quite real. Sense of inclusion brings with it a sense of belongingness; sense of ownership brings with it a sense of accountability and responsibility. An employee who is engaged would feel that she is an integral part of the organization and she belongs there; an employee with the sense of ownership would feel that she is responsible for the results. This makes her go the full nine yards regardless of the circumstances and when a sizeable proportion of the employee base feels this way, there is an obvious positive impact on the business results for the organization. It is the latter which is typically called “Commitment” though the specific definition used by different surveys would vary in the particular words that are used to describe the same. It is to this measurement that most organizations have turned to in the last few years and, to their dismay, most organizations have found that this score rarely crosses the 50% mark.

My hypothesis is that there are four very fundamental steps that we as managers often miss which leads to employee commitment being what we see in the survey results.

1. Ensuring that the employee is in the correct bus and on the correct seat: Every organization is different and no two roles even within the organization are identical. Therefore, it is so very important to ensure that the right people have been selected by the organization to do the role that they can best do. It is much easier said than done primarily because the information set available to both the employee and the organization is limited. And even if the information set was perfect, that is, each side knew the other side perfectly well, even then mistakes can be made because more often than not the organization is not very clear on what it specifically takes to succeed in a role (often called “success factors” in the role) and even more common is the fact that the individual employee may not be clear under what circumstances does she perform the best. Therefore, the first step for any organization is to very clearly enunciate the success factors in as many roles as feasible. This would mean having a clear understanding of what would make an employee succeed in a particular role within the circumstances and culture of that organization. Though painstaking and time consuming, it makes hiring decisions (whether internal or external) that much easier because the hiring entity knows exactly what it is looking for. There is no one specific method for identifying the success factors in a particular role; however, structured interviews with key stakeholders for the role as well as with previous incumbents (if the role is not a new one) along with benchmarking of similar roles in similar organizations could provide very good data points from which the success factors could be distilled. The other part for the organization is to assess the culture fit of the individual- both from a manifested behavior perspective as well as from a temperamental perspective. While the factor of culture becomes critical for external hires, for internal hires the temperament and the demonstrated behavior could be a lead indicator of the extent to which an individual would succeed in a particular role. There are several instances in many organizations where an individual is given a particular role just because he did well in another role and it is time to give him another role since he has already earned his stripes in the previous one. Even if the individual has the requisite skills to perform the job, the specific behaviors called for and therefore the temperament required could be very different from what that individual possesses and that could be a sure shot recipe for inadequate performance leading to reduction of employee’s commitment and even engagement. For those of us who follow cricket like a religion, it is like saying than an opening batman can be put in late middle order just because he score lot many runs as an opener; or the other way round. That could be a disaster because the temperament required for an opening batsman is very different from that of a late middle order batsman and hence the roles cannot be interchanged even if the objective of both roles is to maximize runs scored.
2. Ensure that the Employee knows what is expected: Though very obvious, but we all know the time it takes for an organization (of any reasonable size) to ensure that all its employees have well defined goals at the beginning of the year. Now if an employee is unsure of what is expected of him or her in the job very specifically, then how could the employee feel like an “owner” and hence display commitment? It is incredibly na?ve to assume that any human being could display the behaviors of an “owner” without having a clear picture of what he or she is supposed to strive for. Going back to the cricket analogy, every individual player knows exactly what he is supposed to do in relation to what others in the team are expected to do- the opening batsmen know that they have to lay a solid foundation so that the middle order can build on that score and the tail-end batsmen can score the quick runs towards the end of a limited overs game, so on and so forth. Creating this level of clarity of one’s role with respect to that of the others goes much beyond the traditional job descriptions that one is accustomed to. This implies absolute clarity of one’s deliverables in relation to those of the others and in the specific circumstances that one is operating. Many of us, as managers, fail to provide this level of clarity to our team members.
3. Ensure that the employee is clear about how she is contributing to the larger goal: I am sure even if the best of players would play very differently when they are playing for their local club as compared to when they are representing their country in the world stage. That is exactly the case with most employees. An owner always knows the “big picture” regardless of what he or she is doing currently; an employee often does not. And that makes the difference between a committed employee and the one who is not. The owner of a mom-and-pop shop knows exactly what the big picture for his business is as does the owner of multi-billion dollar retails chain outlet would. That drives ownership and that is what leads to committed employees. The “big picture” need not be some philanthropic cause; it could well be something very ordinary- the important thing is that does the employee see how he or she is contributing to the larger goal. There are employees in cigarette manufacturing or selling carbonated soft drinks (and by no means I intend to endorse any value to either of the products) who are very committed to what they do; and there are employees in public service who do not feel half as engaged let alone be committed. The point is that it is not what the organization does which leads to commitment of its employees but it is the extent to which it is able to link the work of an individual employee to the larger organizational goal which actually leads to individual commitment from employees.
4. Ensure that the employee feels valued: No human being would ever feel like an “owner” in a place where he or she does not feel valued. Feeling values is a necessary condition for being committed. A person can feel valued in several ways but perhaps the most important one is where he or she feels his or her voice would be heard by all people who matter and therefore feels “in control” of the situation. If the employee has to act like an owner, then the bare minimum condition is that employee must feel “in-control” of his or her work. If the employee is made to feel like a cog in the wheel or in other words is always expected to be told to do what is being asked without having an opportunity to make her point of view heard, it would be rather unrealistic to assume that the same employee would in any way feel or behave like an “owner”. This essentially means that managers have to be very patient listeners (not just hear the employees out) to their teams, individually as well as collectively. We all know that just because the manager is senior in hierarchy does in no way mean that he is bestowed with all the wisdom in the world. It is not only possible but highly probable that the individuals who report to that manager may well have ideas/ opinions which may well be superior to that of the manager, if for nothing else but because the direct report to closer to where the action is. Listening to employees and acting on their recommendations wherever it is warranted and patiently explaining where it is not could go a long way in making the employees feel that they are valued. In the same way, seeking to understand the employee as an individual, as distinct from a resource to be utilized in an optimal manner, goes a long way in giving the employee the feeling of being valued. Investing in the development professional development of the employee either in functional areas or in behavioral areas to make him or her better in what he or she is doing or preparing him or her for a future role, sends a clear message that the employee is valued.

Nothing I have mentioned above is unknown to anyone. The issue is how well can this be demonstrated across all managers across the organization. That differentiates organizations with higher proportion of committed employees from the rest of the pack.