How cleaning out the coffee pot at work could help protect you from a layoff
By Jena McGregor, Washington Post, February 17, 2015
The job market is improving. The unemployment rate has been going down. But big layoffs have hardly gone away.
So how can you help protect yourself against a layoff? Performing well, of course. Making yourself indispensable--the person who knows how to use that buggy software system or who has personal contacts with a key client--can’t hurt.
Meanwhile, a new academic study, recently published online by the journal Human Resource Management, helps to validate the idea that having a good attitude and being a good corporate citizen also could help inoculate workers when the ax falls. Although much research has looked at the benefits of seniority or good performance, “researchers haven’t really identified those other more intangible factors an employee can bring to an organization that may buffer them in the time of layoffs,” the paper’s co-author, Chris Zatzick, said in an interview.
The intangible factor Zatzick and his colleagues wanted to measure was something called “affective organizational commitment,” a wonky phrase for describing the emotional attachment employees feel to the mission and goals of the organization where they work. It differs, Zatzick said, from the popular H.R. term “employee engagement,” which has more to do with how engrossed people are with the tasks they perform every day. And it’s closely linked with what researchers call “employee citizenship” behaviors, such as taking time to help new colleagues learn the ropes, staying late, volunteering to work on weekends, or cleaning out the break room fridge.
To do the study, Zatzick and his colleagues examined job cuts at an Australian bank that has operations in Europe and Asia. In the first year of the study, Zatzick and his co-authors randomly sent a questionnaire to nearly 6,000 of the bank’s roughly 20,000 employees. It asked them questions such as how proud they are to tell people they work for the bank, how much the bank inspires them, and how much they care about the bank’s future. Of the 3,057 employees who made up their final sample, 5 percent, or 155, were laid off in the succeeding five years.
The study found that higher ratings of commitment, as determined by the questionnaire, decreased the likelihood of being laid off. Although traditional measures of on-the-job performance were still the strongest determinant of who received pink slips, professing a good attitude and a strong commitment to the workplace gave average performers a real edge. Employees’ responses were plotted on a five-point scale, Zatzick said, and moving up just one point decreased workers’ chances of a layoff by about 20 percent.
But does answering a questionnaire in the positive really mean someone is going above and beyond in day-to-day work? Zatzick said that past research has shown a high correlation between an employee’s assessment of his or her commitment and what his or her managers think. In addition, although the questionnaire didn’t specifically ask how many days an employee stays late each week or how often he or she attends workplace happy hours, Zatzick said past studies have also shown a consistent link between highly committed workers and those who act like good corporate citizens.
At a time when pay-for-performance schemes are de rigueur, when more and more people work remotely and when many people may be jaded about company loyalty after years of employers showing none of their own, Zatzick thinks his results help validate the real payoff in helping the organization at large.
“There’s a choice we make about how to spend our time at work,” he said. Although performance may matter most, “having a good attitude and being a good ‘citizen’ can protect you as well.”