Description
Relative measure of employees’ commitment to the organisation.
Formula
Survey results.
Interpretation
Organisations typically measure employee commitment using survey results. Each survey will likely have a different set of questions or methodologies for measuring employee commitment.
The Employee Commitment Index measures an employee’s attachment and commitment to the organisation. It is based on a number of survey questions that measure employees’ commitment, such as their desire to spend their career with the organisation or sector and their views on the firm as a great place to work.
Employee commitment is thus distinct from employee retention, which measures intention to leave and job search behaviour. Commitment is also distinct from employee engagement, which measures the effort and enthusiasm employees put into their daily work.
Commitment is partly influenced by employees’ perceived external market opportunity and offer fit, and commitment directly impacts their likelihood of staying with or leaving the firm. Thus, declining Employee Commitment Index results are likely to drive eventual turnover, especially if employees perceive labour market opportunities to be favourable.
Organisations can study undesirable results further to understand whether lack of commitment is driven by employment brand issues, leadership issues, internal process issues or other factors.
Survey results can often be difficult to interpret if they are presented as question-by-question detail without aggregated indices. An index measure such as Employee Commitment Index can provide a more strategic view of one major aspect of employee perceptions.
Most employers find that there is no one overall ‘satisfaction’ figure that can take the pulse of the workforce in a way that is actionable by the organisation. Rather, the organisation needs a collection of these aggregations or indices to grasp a holistic perspective of employee opinions and take action to improve the weakest areas.
Data Sourcing
Organisations typically source data for this measure from the responses to one or more questions from employee surveys.
Analysis
Where possible from data sets, this measure can be analysed by a wide variety of dimensions, including demographic, structural, geographic and others. Such analysis is necessary if the employer wishes to make decisions or take action to better understand and improve the commitment of low result employee groups. Note, however, that analysis by employee characteristics is only possible when those fields are captured within the survey itself or when an individual’s responses can be linked back to characteristics in other data sources through an employee identifier.
Limitations
As with all survey related metrics, the value provided by this measure depends heavily on the effectiveness of survey design and delivery in accurately reporting employees’ opinions. Additionally, all survey measures represent employee perceptions at a point in time and can reflect temporal events (e.g. a recent layoff).
Commitment is one aspect of the employee’s relationship with and opinions about the organisation. Engagement, likelihood of retention, perceived market opportunity, offer fit and perceived manager quality are also important dimensions not represented by this measure.