An investigation into the level of engagement and commitment in service organisations

Abstract

Organisations need to be more service oriented and need to exceed customers’ expectations if they want to remain competitive and provide an excellent service. This research aims to examine how these organisations try to achieve its goals aimed at service excellence. This research was conducted amongst four local service organisations. The purpose of the research was to investigate the levels of engagement and commitment in service organisations; and furthermore, to establish whether management have policies and procedures in place to encourage an engagement. Through the use of qualitative studies, in this case interviews with top management from various departments, the researcher tried to reveal the culture of the organisations and the manner this relates to the literature review on the subject. This was done by means of triangulation via quantitative data by the use of questionnaires with the rest of the employees in order to obtain a whole picture and to further support the qualitative findings. SPSS and thematic analysis were used to analyse the findings, and they revealed that the organisations are instilling a culture of engagement, however more needs to be done to have a more committed workforce. Lack of communication and lack of common procedures are evident in the organisations and management need to work on these issues to provide service excellence. The researcher provides a number of recommendations which it is hoped to be of value to the organisations to accomplish service excellence.