Freedom encourages employees to share ideas
A study by researchers from Singapore and France has suggested an open culture for employees for productivity enhancement through intrinsic commitment to assignments in India.
The study has underlined the role of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) to address issues related to employee motivation and retention.
Knowing that affective commitment can play a significant role in influencing employees to engage in extra role behaviors, this can be leveraged by Information Systems (IS) managers in multiple ways, said Shalini Chandra, assistant professor at S P Jain School of Global Management in Singapore.
Chandra noted India’s need to have more “output from employee performance” as the country industrializes, and retain the value of skilled employee in a specific position.
The study offers insights into the relevance of autonomous motivations for IT workers by creating intrinsic, extrinsic and social meaning of work.
Chandra worked on the study with Associate Prof. Damien Joseph from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, and Associate Prof Shirish C. Srivastava of HEC Paris, which specialises in education and research in management.
“IT organizations can carefully plan and strategize their work to keep their employees motivated despite the uncertainties and challenges in the industry,” said Chandra.
Keeping in mind the manner in which IT workers appraise their work might help keep the employees motivated and committed to their organization.
“This, in turn, will increase organizational performance as such employees engage in extra role behaviors,” she stressed.
As an example, she pointed out “Organizations can create open culture where all employees can freely contribute ideas and share opinions through company-wide meetings or digital platforms.
“Similarly, organizations can enhance extrinsic meaning of work for their employees by offering them extrinsic perks such as free lunches at work because in the long run they help in enhancing their affective commitment to the organization,” said Chandra.
Positive feedback from managers will also increase the extrinsic employee motivations, she added.
Furthermore, employees will stay socially motivated if organizations make a genuine attempt to connect the employees to the beneficiaries from their work so that they can see the real impact of their job.
Thus, this study’s findings about the relationships between meaning of work and OCB through affective commitment have implications for strategizing and managing the meanings which IT employees derive from their work, she said. fii-news.com
