Satisfaction With Work-Life Benefits and Organizational Commitment/Job Involvement

Abstract

Given that an employee’s personal responsibilities can have an effect on their work, one method increasingly used by government agencies to improve performance has been to offer programs that assist workers in balancing work and personal obligations. Employee demand for such work-life programs is also increasing due to the growing amount of women in the workplace, two-career families, and workers wanting a greater ability to manage work and life. Yet despite the increase in supply and demand for work-life programs, empirical examinations regarding the benefits of these programs in government agencies are scarce. As a result, this article examines the association between employee satisfaction with work-life programs and two important factors that drive work motivation: organizational commitment and job involvement. Data was obtained from the 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint survey, and the results from the analysis extended previous literature in several important ways. First, work motivation was not consistently affected by employee levels of satisfaction with work-life benefits in federal agencies. More specifically, employee satisfaction with most work-life benefits (i.e., telework, health and wellness programs, child care, and older adult care) were positively associated to organizational commitment, and none were associated to job involvement. Next, organizational commitment was influenced more by family-friendly programs and health and wellness programs than by flexible working arrangements. The implications of these findings are detailed in the study.

Affective Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction: A Cross‐national Comparative Study

“…; Davis ), and has found that job satisfaction has a strong correlation with organizational commitment (Mathieu and Zajac ; Meyer et al . ; Moynihan and Pandey ; Caillier ), but it is also distinguishable from organizational commitment (Mowday et al . ; Williams and Hazer ; Glisson and Durick ; Meyer et al .…”

“…). A single‐item measure of job satisfaction has been used in several studies on job satisfaction (Moynihan and Pandey ; West and Berman ; Caillier ; Lee and Sabharwal ).…”

“…Like organizational commitment, job satisfaction is critical to understanding employee behaviour (Tett and Meyer 1993;Meyer et al 2002), enhancing motivation, performance, retention, and to ensure the success of an organization (Mathieu and Zajac 1990;Perry and Wise 1990;Tett and Meyer 1993;Steinhaus and Perry 1996;Park and Rainey 2007;Bright 2008;Solinger et al 2008;Aamodt 2012;Rainey 2014). A large body of research has focused on exploring the relationship between these two constructs (Markovits et al 2010;Davis 2013), and has found that job satisfaction has a strong correlation with organizational commitment (Mathieu and Zajac 1990;Meyer et al 2002;Moynihan and Pandey 2007;Caillier 2013), but it is also distinguishable from organizational commitment (Mowday et al 1979;Williams and Hazer 1986;Glisson and Durick 1988;Meyer et al 2002).…”

Servant Leadership, Trust, and the Organizational Commitment of Public Sector Employees in China

“…Affective commitment refers to an employee's emotional attachment to, involvement in, and identification with the organization (Nyhan ). Normative commitment relates to an employee's feelings of obligation to maintain membership in the organization (Caillier ). Continuance commitment refers to the perceived costs to the employee of leaving the organization, for example due to the cessation of work relationships and the non‐transferability of accumulated job skills (Allen and Meyer ).…”

Proud to Be a Public Servant? An Analysis of the Work-Related Determinants of Professional Pride among Dutch Public Servants

“…The most common primary working conditions distinguished in earlier studies in public administration are good wages, satisfaction about the number of hours worked (part-time/fulltime) and tenure (Buelens & Van den Broeck, 2007;Caillier, 2013). Besides primary working conditions, several fringe benefits that emerged from the literature can be classified as working time arrangements (e.g., flexible work hours and teleworking), leave arrangements (e.g., paid parental leave, childcare), financial arrangements (e.g., pension plan, collective healthcare), education and training arrangements (training facilitation through time and money), and arrangements for career support (e.g., job rotation and project work, support by a career coach).…”