Positive feedback from managers, open culture can keep IT employees motivated: Study

Positive feedback from managers and creating an open culture where the employees can freely contribute ideas and share opinions can help in keeping workers of IT companies motivated, according to a study.
The Singapore-French study underlined the role of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) to address issues related to employee motivation and retention.
It said that IT companies can carefully plan and strategise their work to keep their employees motivated despite the uncertainties and challenges in the industry.
It also suggested an open culture for employees for productivity enhancement through intrinsic commitment to assignments.
Knowing that affective commitment can play a significant role in influencing employees to engage in extra role behaviours, this can be leveraged by Information Systems (IS) managers in multiple ways, said Shalini Chandra, assistant professor at S P Jain School of Global Management in Singapore.

Chandra noted India's need to have more "output from employee performance" as the country industrialises, and retain the value of skilled employee in a specific position.

The study offers insights into the relevance of autonomous motivations for IT workers by creating intrinsic, extrinsic and social meaning of work.
Chandra worked on the study with Associate Professor Damien Joseph from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, and Associate Professor Shirish C Srivastava of HEC Paris, which specialises in education and research in management.
"IT organisations can carefully plan and strategise their work to keep their employees motivated despite the uncertainties and challenges in the industry," said Chandra.

Keeping in mind the manner in which IT workers appraise their work might help keep the employees motivated and committed to their organisation.
"This, in turn, will increase organisational performance as such employees engage in extra role behaviours," she stressed.
As an example, she pointed out "Organisations can create open culture where all employees can freely contribute ideas and share opinions through company-wide meetings or digital platforms.
"Similarly, organisations can enhance extrinsic meaning of work for their employees by offering them extrinsic perks such as free lunches at work because in the long run they help in enhancing their affective commitment to the organisation," said Chandra.

Positive feedback from managers will also increase the extrinsic employee motivations, she added.
Furthermore, employees will stay socially motivated if organisations make a genuine attempt to connect the employees to the beneficiaries from their work so that they can see the real impact of their job.
Thus, this studys findings about the relationships between meaning of work and OCB through affective commitment have implications for strategising and managing the meanings which IT employees derive from their work, she said.