Employee commitment, how it can be influenced by the recruitment and induction processes of organisations and what employees experience to be the source of the changes to their commitment levels during these processes and their individual components

This research project was aimed towards evaluating the significance and potential of recruitment and induction processes in the creation and development of employee commitment. Relevant variables including recruitment, induction, psychological contracts, engagement and commitment were researched and defined. The consequences of not having employee commitment, leading to alienation, employee turnover and continuous recruitment, was compared to the benefits of active and present employee commitment in an organisation. The benefits to the organisation, employees and customers were evaluated. A questionnaire was created for the employees of a large organisation in the healthcare sector, to gain insight into the employees’ views on recruitment and induction processes’ influence on their own commitment levels. The questions were created based on relevant literature and the organisation’s recruitment and induction processes. The questions were divided and organised based on their relevance to either recruitment, induction or the combination of the two. The questionnaire provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The results provided insight into the impact of the individual processes, their specific steps and components and whether the impact had a positive or a negative effect. Mentoring, communication, information, pre-existing knowledge of the organisation and being welcomed into a new workplace gained relevance and support among the answers. From the two processes, the relevance of induction in particular was highlighted in the results. Overall, the results indicated that for the majority of the respondents, the two processes were not clearly impactful in regards to commitment, but that the recognised influence was mostly positive