Understanding the intricacies of employee commitment

Recent layoffs at all the big companies remind us of the fact that any skill, any position, and any Employee can be replaced. It doesn’t matter how long one has worked for an organization and/or how critical one’s skills and position are to the company. We are in a digital age where we compete with technology more than intellectuality. A serious question every job seeker and employee must ask oneself is how I keep myself competent, relevant, and valuable amidst the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.

The cardinal mistake that every employee does is to define commitment with attributes like loyalty, sincerity, tenure et cetera. They place their trust in the company, thinking that if they are sincere in their efforts and loyal to their leaders then the company will be loyal and will reciprocate the same towards them. Employees get long service awards which extrinsically motivate others and create a false sense of security that organizations recognize and revere employees with long service records. However, many of us tend to see only the number of years of service but don’t understand the journey to get there. It is pivotal to understand how the commitment in an organization is defined before setting a target number of years to work in an organization.

Organizational commitment is how an individual feels towards an organization. it’s like a psychological bond. It is a strong belief in and acceptance of the organisation’s goals and values. According to O’Reilly and Chatman (1986), there are three dimensions of organisational commitment are described as internalisation, identification, and compliance.

1. Internalisation measures the extent to which the employee feels they share the same mission and values as the organisation.
2. Identification describes the employee’s desire to affiliate with their organisation without accepting the organisation’s values as his/her own.
3. Compliance describes an employee who accepts the organisation’s values for his/her gain but does not internalise or hold any of those same values.

Though the above model was not very popular, Meyer and Allen (1991) proposed the most popular and comprehensively validated multidimensional model, which also has three dimensions as following

1. Affective commitment refers to the employee’s perceptions of their emotional attachment to or identification and involvement with their organisation and its goals.
2. Continuance commitment refers to employees’ perceptions of the costs associated with leaving the organisation.
3. Normative commitment refers to employees’ perceptions of their obligation to their organisation.

Now that we have a very fundamental understanding of what organizational commitment is, there are two parts to it. How does an organization approach its employees to stay longer in the company and what does an employee has to do to can stay longer in the company? These are two different approaches.

Once out of college, when we look for a job we want to work with established companies where we feel secure about our job. However, we neither factor nor emphasize the nature of work. For example, from a class of computer graduates, all of them may not be employed as software developers. Some may be into other functions, and or other support roles. It is perfectly fine as long one loves the work but if one accepts employment because of the company reputation, or the perks that come along, then the layoff or becoming obsolete down the lane is always there like the sword of Damocles

Employees tend to move into the comfort zone and slowly get into the zone of continuance and normative commitment. As people get older and remain in their organisations, they may develop an emotional attachment to the organisation that makes it difficult to switch jobs. Married people have greater financial burdens and family responsibilities and need more stability and security in their jobs. Therefore, they are likely to be more committed to their current organisation than their unmarried counterparts.