Discus the understanding of commitment of managers and employees. What are the formulas use for aligning commitment (By Professor Coetzee)?
Understanding commitment of managers and employees
There is a need to understand certain fundamentals that are inherent and practiced by people in organisations.
Level 1
Here people are taking note of what they are or being told. At this level they know about it but this does not mean that they are going to do something about it. This is equivalent to doing nothing. We need to do something better than noting or knowing about it.
Level 2
Support it. Being supportive is equivalent to being on favour of something which means it is acceptable and given a chance you will vote for it. Support is a positive attitude but is not good enough as a manager you need to go beyond just being in favour by contributing something.
Level 3
Involvement is much stronger than support. There is participation especially in decision making that allows employees to feel that they are part of what has been or is being done.
Level 4
This is the highest level that is signified by high levels of commitment. Commitment allows employees to be part of or acquire ownership of any endeavour initiated. When an employee is committed to something he/she knows that it is going to happen i.e. there is full identification with something or being part of that something.
Aligned commitment of employees – this implies that all members are focused to attaining the same goals and are committed to attaining them.
FORMULA FOR ALIGNING COMMITMENT (PROF COETZEE)
Aligned Commitment = knowledge x information x empowerment x recognition and rewards x shared goals and values
Knowledge
Training and development within the organization. This also refers to employee knowledge, skills and abilities, methods and techniques applied to train, develop and to stimulate employee growth.
Managers should create a learning organisation and make an investment in the knowledge of employees.
Information
This refers to communication in an organisation, its concern with the dissemination of information in that organisation (downwards, laterally, and upwards). The importance of the information and how effective the information is distributed and how well it is understood by the employees (take an effort to inform people on what is happening not to hear about it in the press) because it affects morale especially when things are bad.
Empowerment
This is the extent to which employees can influence and partake in decision making, the enlargement of responsibilities and competences of employees. Opportunities should be provided for employees to assist with the identification of problems and defining the problems and inviting their inputs in decisions on how work should be done.
How work methods could be improved and the delegating of more comprehensive powers and responsibilities has a bearing of levels of commitment and motivation.
Rewards and Recognition
This refers to the reward and recognition, philosophies, policies and systems and the way these are applied in the organization e.g. acknowledgement, recognition, withholding it, giving rewards and taking disciplinary action, linking pay to performance i.e. a performance management system.
Shared values and Goals
This refers to a combination of what to achieve here and how we do things here. The shared goals have to be clearly formulated and communicated to employees and have to be clearly understood and accepted.
Job Satisfaction
In a motivating environment both employees and managers are generally satisfied with their jobs but just like with the civil service satisfaction doesn’t mean productivity. If also follows that it doesn’t mean that satisfied employees performs better than dissatisfied employees. There is no direct link between satisfaction and performance or productivity.
