Enhancing Work Performance in Elderly Services - High Commitment Work System and Its Potential Applications

Abstract

Social service for the elderly in Hong Kong has increased rapidly, while scientific and efficient human resource management (HRM) would be of essential importance to elderly service organizations. We propose that High Commitment Work Systems (HCWS) may help in achieving the sustainability of elderly services. HCWS refers to a system of HRM practice aiming to maximize employee’s work commitment, which will in turn improve organization performance. While HCWS has been widely adopted in many sectors such as manufacturing, retailing, and hotel industries, little is known about whether or not HCWS is suitable to social service organizations. Moreover, a Hong Kong context is less discussed in the literature. This study aims to examine the applicability of a Chinese measure HCWS in elderly service sectors.

A self-administered survey was conducted among staffs in 37 elderly service units of Caritas, a major non-governmental organization (NGO) in Hong Kong. A structured questionnaire, including measures of 15-item Xiao & Björkman (2006)’s High Commitment Work System, 20-item Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) for job satisfaction (JS), 6-item Allen et al. (1996)’s questionnaire for job engagement (JE), 6-item Singh et al. (1996)’s questionnaire for job performance (JP), and 2 questions of stay intention (SI) was distributed to all eligible full-time employees, 759 questionnaires have been received, and 732 valid questionnaires were included in analyses.

To a large extent, HCWS is suitable to Hong Kong’s elderly service organizations. Enhancing HCWS would promote employee’s job satisfaction, job engagement and job performance. HCWS can contribute new thoughts and practices to the current HRM of elderly service industry in Hong Kong.