Jonathan DeGraff and Dr. John Bingham, Organizational Leadership and Strategy
Employers seek to enhance employee dedication and increase company productivity while controlling operating costs; hence, companies have recently been investing more in human resource (HR) programs and recognition practices. The honors thesis I recently completed at Brigham Young University sought to augment practioners’ and academicians’ knowledge about HR programs and recognition practices by evaluating their respective effects on employee attitudes. This report will review the methods and findings of my project, as well as explain how I used the ORCA Grant to achieve my goals.
For my project, I surveyed over 1,200 employees from 73 companies. My sample echoed Gostick & Elton (2006) who found that the majority of employees today leave their jobs because of a lack of recognition, as only half of respondents said that they have been formally praised or recognized at their current employment. And this phenomenon is most likely not due to a lack of merit on these employees’ part because my sample yielded an average Personal Performance score of 4.20 on a 5-point scale. One survey respondent stated, “The morale of [my organization] is very low. I feel only certain departments have more attention given to them. We work very hard in our department, all of us going beyond the call of duty, without any recognition.” These employees believe that they are doing their duties and going the extra mile; they not only desire recognition but also need it (Crosby, 1979; Maslow, 1970).
Based on prior research (Gostick & Elton, 2006; Recognition, 2006; Reifman, 2006; Henneman, 2005; Robbins, 2005; Crosby, 1979), I first hypothesized that employees who have been recognized at work will report attitudes that are significantly more favorable than the attitudes of employees who have not been recognized at work. Through ANOVA, I determined that the differences in the means were statistically significant with respect to all three attitudes (p < .01 for each of the three attitudes)—an attitudinal improvement of almost 9 percent. These results emphatically show that recognition at work does significantly improve job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and employee engagement. Hypotheses 2 and 3, respectively, postulated that the employees in companies that sponsor high-performance human resource or recognition practices would have significantly more favorable attitudes than employees who work for companies that do not have such practices. In evaluating these hypotheses, ANOVA was again employed, this time plotting the attitudinal scores against the existence and non-existence of high-performance and recognition practices, respectively. Although the existence some HR practices produced more favorable attitudes, the marginal improvement in employee attitudes was very small. In other words, it appears that the mere presence of an HR program or recognition practice does not yield a practically significant change in employee attitudes. The resulting question then follows: If the mere presence of high-performance and recognition practices does not yield a practically significant outcome, then what does? Hypothesis 1 already empirically showed that employees who have been recognized at work report attitudes significantly more favorable than the attitudes of employees who have not been recognized at work. My final hypothesis coincidentally sheds light on that subsequent question. For my analysis of Hypotheses 4, I computed the correlations between the attitudinal scores and the ratings of the HR and recognition practices. Virtually all of the correlational coefficients were positive and statistically significant, indicating that the perceived quality of how well a practice is implemented (as indicated in my survey by a rating of the practice) is linked to employee attitudes. Thus, while the mere presence of HR and recognition practices do not have a large influence on employee attitudes, how well employees perceive their implementation does have a significant impact. The support offered by the ORCA Grant enabled me to present these important findings at three conferences and receive important feedback preparatory for publication. I first presented my research at the November 2007 meeting of the Society for Human Resource Management of Central Utah at Stevens-Henager College in Orem, Utah, then at the Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research at UVSC a couple months later, and finally at the 2008 WorldatWork Total Rewards Conference and Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I presented different facets of my research at each conference and feel that I learned a lot in preparing for each conference. The most helpful experience in furthering my work came through submitting my work to the Academy of Management, the premiere academic association in my field. Unfortunately my paper was not accepted this time around, but the feedback I received (from four seasoned professors) was extremely helpful and will aid me in my preparations for publication to an academic journal. Some comments suggested I consult other research in my paper, others encouraged me to use different statistical tools to evaluate my data. This experience has solidified my desire to pursue a career in academia, as I’m matriculating in a Ph.D. Management program in the Fall of 2008 at The University of Texas at Austin.
References
Recognition 2006: Engraving Every Mind. (2006). Minnetonka: Cargill, Inc.
