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Find out if staff are motivated and giving their best

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Gain competitive advantage over other firms by caring about your employees’ commitment at work. PHOTO | FILE | FOTOSEARCH

Akumu gazed around the conference room of the brokerage firm where she worked. Her colleagues all listened attentively during the Monday morning all-staff meeting led by the managing director. However, Akumu did not respect the managing director’s ability to do his job.

In as much, she found herself drifting off, staring at the trees outside the window, and pondering working for another company.

Further, Akumu felt trapped at the brokerage firm. She spent so much time studying for and passing all three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) professional designation, that she felt obligated to stay in the investment banking and brokerage career path.

But Akumu yearned to travel, see the world, and help those in need. But could she make a living doing something different with her specialised training so unique to investment finance?

Akumu’s tough situation is faced by millions of Kenyans: a lack of commitment to their orgnisation. Employees often feel trapped, unmotivated, or apathetic towards the firm. Some executives might just excuse the phenomenon as a normal reality of employees maintaining a job.

Managers often state “no matter how staff feel inside, as long as an employee performs, that is what we care about”. Unfortunately, employees simply cannot perform optimally while mired in such a psychological state.

As business owners and firm managers, we should not make assumptions about how to handle interpersonal staff relationships.
Science knows how management should behave and what actions to take in dealing with employees. As a professor, part of my role is to bring established scientific theories and cutting-edge research into the hands of business executives in East Africa in order to enhance the efficiency and success of their organisations.

Business Talk hereby enters a new mini-series on what science knows and business leaders need to comprehend.

Executives who value the science behind fundamental organisational behaviour benefit from generating a source of competitive advantage over other firms.

The basis of quality interpersonal corporate relationships revolves around organisational trust, as discussed last week in Business Talk. What are some of the fruits of organisational trust?

Since the mid-1990s, social scientists know that organisational commitment stands as a beneficially large byproduct. There exist three distinct themes with regard to orgnisational commitment as pioneered by researchers Meyer and Allan.

Employee commitment survives first as an affective attachment to an organisation. Employees with a strong affective commitment remain with an organization because they want to.

Second, employees sensitively experience commitment as a perceived cost associated with leaving the organisation. As researchers Meyer and Allan who were later joined by Dr Catherine Smith emphasise that those with a strong continuance commitment remain because they need to do so.

Third, employees feel committed as an obligation to remain in the organisation. Those staff with a strong normative commitment stay with a firm because they feel they ought to do so.

While the above themes sound excessively academic and very similar, each of the themes hold real implications for you as business owners. Further, the nature of the psychological state of each theme is very different from each other.

Employee commitment as affective, continuance, and normative is a psychological state that characterises the employees’ relationship with the organisation and holds implications for the decision to continue or discontinue membership in the organisation.

Akumu maintains issues in each of the three themes of organisational commitment. Since Akumu holds commitment issues with all three aspects, she poses a greater risk to the organisation as a poor performer and bringing down the performance of her coworkers.

In fact, professors Dirks, Ferrin, and Skarlicki delineate that if staff feel disconnected to management and hold low trust for executives, then they are more likely to band together for mutual support. If other employees shared Akumu’s view that the boss lacked the ability to lead the organisation, then staff would seek out each other horizontally rather than vertically.

If the coworker bond remains strong but the bond with management is weak, researchers Tan and Lim in Singapore found recently that then staff negativity could spiral out of control beyond a few disgruntled staff and actually sink the firm altogether.

Akumu further holds commitment issues since she invested so much time and energy into the CFA professional designation that can only be fully utilised in her existing industry. Inasmuch, she feels she must continue in the firm, despite her unhappiness, because of the cost associated with leaving and retraining.

How might CEOs deal with and prevent workers like Akumu from becoming unmotivated and dwindle their commitment?

Many antecedents exist that cause commitment decline, including structural aspects of the firm, job-related characteristics, personal characteristics, and work experiences as discovered by Dr. Mowday.

However, instead of an executive focusing so much attention fighting many fronts, science shows that if the manager focuses mostly on positive work experiences for staff, then Meyer and Allan determine that employee commitment will skyrocket upwards: “employees whose experiences within the organisation are consistent with their expectations and satisfy their basic needs tend to develop a stronger affective attachment to the organization than do those whose experiences are less satisfying.”

How do you build positive experience?

Incorporate some easy wins for your teams to achieve. Celebrate accomplishments. Lead through referent, or friendly, power rather than coercive leadership with threats and attacks. Provide training and team building. Create a knowledge-oriented friendly atmosphere. Give employees input into decisions.

Then, you will see substantial workplace gains as your staff become more committed to you, to the occupation, and to the entity as a whole. Your competitive advantage may tip the scales and put your firm on top.

Why do you stay in your job? Are you just staying because you have invested too much in the profession? Debate on #KenyaTop10 on Twitter.

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Prof Scott is the director of the New Economy Venture Accelerator at USIU’s Chandaria School of Business and Colorado State University, www.ScottProfessor.com, and may be reached on: [email protected] or follow on Twitter: @ScottProfessor.