Another interesting topic when discussing about employee improvement in Human Resources Development quality improvement course. Individual commitment is vital to employee involvement efforts. Commitment leads to employee actions and goals that support those of the organization. Committed employees often go beyond what they’re asked or normally expected to in order to uphold a corporate goal or improve the value of a product or service for a customer.

So how does a company gain commitment in these situations? Gary Dessler examined 10 companies that show extraordinary concern for their employees, such as Saturn Corporation, Delta Airlines, Ben and Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., FedEx, and IBM, to determine how they deal with the commitment problem. During the turbulent business environment of the 1990s, several of these firms have had to scrap long-standing policies such as “lifetime employment” due to serious financial setbacks.

Dessler suggested that they still have the capability to inspire commitment in their employees by following many of his eight “Keys to Commitment” which are People-First Value, Double-Talk, Communion, Transcendental Mediation, Value-Based Hiring, Securitizing, Hard-Side Rewards and Actualizing.

1. People-first values: a total management commitment to employees that includes such things as fair treatment, written policies, hiring and indoctrination processes, managers who “walk the talk” in everyday actions, and elimination of trust barriers such as time clocks.
2. Double-talk: a catchy way of saying that communication must flow up the organization as well as down. One example is the “Speak-up” programs used by companies such as Toyota, FedEx, IBM, and others to give employees a chance to air complaints and clarify misunderstandings about vital organization changes that affect them
3. Communion: efforts to encourage people to take pride and develop a sense of ownership and belonging in their organization. It includes such practices as value-based hiring (hiring people who have team values, for example), eliminating status differences between managers and line employees (such as executive dining rooms), employee recognition rituals, regular group contact meetings, and having profit-sharing and risk-sharing plans that apply to both executives and employees.
4. Transcendental meditation: articulation and development of the ideologies, missions, and values, and communication mechanisms they require
5. Value-based hiring: careful attention to the hiring process by articulating the corporate values carefully, advertising widely, thorough (often multilevel, multiphase) interviewing, realistic job previews, and rigorous training and early job assignments under sometimes adverse conditions.
6. Securitizing: lifetime employment without guarantees, which seems to be a contradiction in terms but indicates that the company will do whatever it can to maintain permanent employment security through such practices as cross-training, use of part-time and temporary workers, bonuses given only if the company is profitable, and “sharing the pain” by salary and work week reductions during economic downturns.
7. Hard-side rewards: pay plans that support employees and provide incentives for them to help themselves while they help the organization. Such practices include bonus systems, “at risk” portions of pay packages, benefit and pension plans that give employees the idea that they are valued for the long term, and self-reporting of time worked; and
8. Actualizing: giving employees the opportunity and incentives to use a wide variety of skills and knowledge to accomplish their jobs. This “key” is derived from the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs self-actualization.