Moving people from E to C

Organisations have been focusing on improving Employee Engagement with popular concepts and frameworks around it, but now it’s time to look beyond this…

Shifting Gears and moving on to next matured model will be .. Graduating  people from Engagement to Citizenship ie.. Employee to Citizen ..

Organizational Citizenship behavior ( OCB) has been studied since the late 1970s.

Over the past three decades, interest in these behaviors has increased substantially. Organizational behavior has been linked to overall organizational effectiveness, thus these types of employee behaviors have important impact in the workplace.

Dennis Organ is generally considered the father of OCB. Organ expanded upon Katz's (1964) original work.

So how do you go about building “Citizenship” among people in your Organisation ?

What are the typical behavior that Citizens exhibit in Organisational Environment ? ( refer Bret Simmons TEDx talk)

Typically He or she who would Voluntarily(ers) …….

- To Leads teams , in an informal manner !

- To Shares expertise , says do and dont's !

- Cautions for pitfalls , positive criticism !

- Resolves conflicts , in a friendly neutral manner !

- Takes preventive action , avoiding disasters that may bound to happen !

Expects no official Reward or Recognition to pursue any of the above actions !

Looking at the above ,Contrary to popular notion that OLD timers in the organisation would be natural Citizens , study has shown that most of New Joiners also demonstrate the above behavior in first 100 days , There need to be a supporting culture and mechanism to take this Citizenship zeal forward or, they may be  influenced by the strong prevailing culture and likely to become less effective on the above !

HR Managers in Organisation have a great role to play to build on this theme and take it further in nurturing Citizenship , and one tool which could be considered is using - Force Field analysis to identify "Enabling factors" and "Restraining forces" to build citizenship.

While Engagement focuses on Job related dimensions , OCBs are discretionary behaviours, not part of their defined job, and are performed by the employee as a result of personal choice.

OCB is also referred to as Contextual performance -Volunteering for additional work, following organizational rules and procedures even when personally inconvenient, assisting and cooperating with co workers, and various other discretionary behaviours some of which are listed above, which contribute to the overall success of the organization.

Can we shift gears and move people from E to C – from  being mere “Employees” to “CITIZENS” ? shifting focus from Engagement to more of Citizenship building ?