HRM commitment

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Human Resource Management

Mowday et al have defined organizational commitment as “ the relative strength of an individual’s identification with an involvement in an organization”

(Chapter 7 Attitudes at work, Page no, 265 Work Psychology, Understanding Human Behaviour in the Workplace by John Arnold (ft) fourth edition)

Commitment is very powerful human concept as if a person is committed to an organization; therefore he or she has a strong identification with it and will turn out to be a long-term employee for the organization. Sir Richard Branson is an example of someone’s commitment towards its work. He born in an ordinary established family but it was his commitment, which led him to build the virgin empire and now he is one of the richest man in the world.

Controlling the absenteeism is the objective of nearly every business organization and the phrase commitment is regularly used by HRM practitioners in order to control the absenteeism, In this essay I will explain the above statement in more details and also provide the evidence to support it.

The question arises here why absenteeism is important? Absenteeism is important because it’s not only costly but it also affects the morale of other employees. The cost of absenteeism is greater than the direct payment of wages and benefits paid during the absence. Organizations must also consider the indirect cost of staffing, scheduling, re-training, lost productivity, diminished moral, turnover, opportunity cost. The indirect costs often exceed the direct cost of absenteeism.

According to a report by healthcare consultancy IHC, 40 million days are lost each year in the UK to workplace absenteeism.

There are mainly two types of absenteeism voluntary and involuntary. Nothing can stop voluntary absence, as it is because of serious illness or accident but involuntary absence can be controlled because the reasons for involuntary absence can be reduced. As involuntary absence is time taken off by the staff for doing something else.

From above it is clear that for an organization to be successful it has to reduce absenteeism. So what an organization can do to reduce absenteeism? More committed employees reduce the absenteeism in an organization. Commitment can also be seen as someone’s loyalty towards a cause or person. In terms of HRM commitment is when an employee do what an organization expect from him to do at his best level. HRM regards commitment to reduce absenteeism.

There are many HRM models presented by different practitioners such as Guest, Storey, and Beer et al etc. They all ...

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There are many HRM models presented by different practitioners such as Guest, Storey, and Beer et al etc. They all state in their models how HRM should aim the aims and policies.

We can now look at the Guest’s model of HRM and Guest goals of HRM to see how HRM can fulfill the need to an organization and its employees.

Guest Model of HRM

Model adapted from Dr Peter Prowse’s lectures slides on control and commitment, HRM model, Lecture 3 of human resource management

Guest Goals of HRM

Guest in his model and goals of HRM above included commitment in order to achieve HRM. An organization needs to reinforce commitment in order to reduce absenteeism and increase commitment as increase commitment increases performance and reduce absenteeism. This is done through, “Share ownership, quality circle (where groups of employee jointly review the quality of output), and empowerment”

(Chapter 7 Attitudes at work, Work Psychology, Understanding Human Behaviour in the Workplace by John Arnold fourth edition)

Employees can be offered shares in company in order to make them more committed towards work, as they would have their own money invested into the business that will make them more motivated and committed because if organization perform well they will get more dividends so indirectly they are getting financial benefits from that.

Quality circles first arrived to UK from USA via Japan, Quality circle are made up of 6-10 employees and they held meeting either on weekly or fortnightly basis, The main objectives of these meetings are to discuss the problems from their own areas and collect data and then find a possible solution to overcome the problem which then presented to the management. Quality circles have high degree of employee involvement in decision-making process. Quality circles give employees the sense of self-actualization, which boost the motivation in employees and also shows that organization cares about their employees. So this really has an impact on employees.

Empowerment is about giving more freedom to employees in terms of making decisions at work instead of management getting involved. This will provide employee with the sense of achievement. So the employee becomes more committed due to its own attachment to the work. In this case organization is not directly involved but indirectly getting the benefit.

Pfeffer another HR practitioner presented his model of HR practice for competitive advantage through people. Model below shows that putting people first leads to high commitment that then leads to high profit and gain of competitive advantage.

Pfeffer Model of HR Practices for “competitive advantage through people”

Source: pfeffer (1998) adapted by marchington and Wilkinson (2002)

Taken from Human Resource Management, (A contemporary approach by Ian Beardwel, Len Holden and Tim Claydon, Fourth Edition)

It’s not only Guest and Pfeffer others have focused on high commitment models Walton (1985) and Wood (1999) on high–involvement practices reflects an underlying assumption that a strong commitment to the organizational goals and values will provide competitive advantage.

[Chapter No2, Best Practices HRM: High-Commitment Models, Page no56-57, Human Resource Management, (A contemporary approach by Ian Beardwel, Len Holden and Tim Claydon, Fourth Edition)]

There are contradictions between the HRM practitioners about the effect of commitment on absenteeism. Guest believes that commitment cannot reduce absenteeism but in his models he has mentioned commitment so he believes that commitment does have an influence on employees and on organization.

“According to Guest (1987) empirical evidence has failed to show the expected link between high commitment and high performance.”

(Taken from Dr Peter Prowse’s lectures slides on control and commitment, HRM model, Lecture 3 of human resource management)

The question that arises is; here why HR practitioners still believe that absenteeism can be reduced through the commitment?

Conflicting finding has been produced when examining the relationship between the commitment, job satisfaction and absenteeism. According to Ostroff (1993) higher level of job satisfaction and commitment associated with lower level of absenteeism, but on other hand Ilgen & Hollenback (1997) and Porter & Steers (1973) found no significant relation ship between commitment and absenteeism at all.

(Chapter 8, Introduction to Industrial/Organisational Psychology by Ronald E Riggio, Fourth Edition)

Arnold & Feldmen (1982), and Stumpf & Hartman (1984) on other hand discovered that job satisfaction and commitment are closely linked to each other. So that means that commitment with job satisfaction can reduce absenteeism. Employees will turn up to work on time not only because they are committed to the organisation but also they are satisfied with the outcome.

From the model, theories and arguments above we can evaluate that there are different approaches by different HR practitioners who contradict each other’s points but it can also be seen that they all believe that commitment plays a vital role in achieving an organisational objective and it has positive effects on both employees and organisation.

If an employee is happy with the working environment and committed to the organisation, then there is less chance that he/she would take involuntary absence. Companies have introduced various procedures to gain commitment from their employees in order to reduce absenteeism and improve morale. For example management at British gas have introduced an award scheme known as “committed employee”. In this programme an employee will get a cash award for having a 100% attendance for six months. It is quiet clear form the above example that companies believes that commitment can reduce absenteeism.

Commitment of an employee towards his job can definitely improve employee’s attitude and behaviour towards his job, which then leads to high productivity, enhanced quality and efficiency, that is linked to the profit which is the objective of all the business organisation.

Ian Beardwell, Len Holden, Tim Claydon, Human Resource Management (A contemporary approach 4th Edition, FT Prentice Hall)

Ronald. E. Riggio, Introduction to Industrial/ Organisational Psychology (4th Edition), Prentice Hall, (2003)

J. Arnold, C. L. Cooper, I. T. Robertson, Work Psychology Understanding Human Behaviour in the Workplace (3rd Edition), Financial Times/ Prentice Hall

P. M. Muchinsky, Psychology Applied to Work (5th Edition), Brooks/ Cole Publishing Company, 1997

David Buchanan, Andrzej Huczynski, Organisational Behaviour (An introductory text 5th Edition) Prentice Hall