The Ideal Employee Base- Organization Citizenship Behaviour

The Ideal Employee Base- Organization Citizenship Behaviour

Every company wants a certain behavior that they want their employees to demonstrate. This kind of behavior is inculcated through office timings, uniforms, policies which include disciplinary policy, IT policy, social media policy, etc., designated work space, and many more to smaller ways like greeting the senior employees in office, salutation used in office mails, etc.

These kinds of behavioural tendencies are mandated by the organization and employees have to toe the line or can be reprimanded for the same. It is important is understand that this behaviour is the minimum that is expected of the employee, but there are certain actions taken by employee which are taken by employee’s own discretion.

For example, staying late to complete a task or helping a colleague with a group task, may not be directed by the company but employees do so out of loyalty and sense of duty towards the company. This kind of behaviour that employees exhibit is called as Organizational Citizenship Behaviour.

This is best explained as discreet behaviours, favoring the efficiency of the organization even if they are not imposed by a contract, or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system. Another example could be- willingness to work an extra two hours on an off day so that there is no loss to the company and helps maintain the prestige of the company. These extra hours of work don’t reward the employee explicitly and might not even affect the overall performance of the employee but employee spends these working because of sense of responsibility towards the company and to see the company thrive.

These may seem like small events but in grand scheme of things, these small incidents when demonstrated by a large group transform the company culture. Hence, more and more companies’ are looking into how to inculcate this in each of their employees and competencies like team work and loyalty is being rewarded by the organisations.