It all started with Dan Lyons. In his New York Times opinion piece “Congratulations! You’ve Been Fired,” Lyons described a trend in startups in which employees are treated as disposable and fired without cause. As a baby boomer who has worked in only three organizations over the last 30 years, I found his editorial disheartening, to say the least.

I then picked up Lyons’ book, “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble,” which further recounts his experiences in the tech industry. He portrays company cultures where employees are required to work grueling hours and give total allegiance – without job security, meaningful development or effective leadership. It made me wonder about commitment under these conditions. Does it even exist? Can we expect it when workers are viewed as disposable? Is it possible to be committed when you are scarcely rewarded?

These questions prompted me to conduct a national study on commitment in the workplace. The study focused on white collar workers across industries with the goal of understanding the current state of commitment in the American workforce, why people make commitments and how well they deliver on those commitments. Here are a few highlights that give me hope, even in the age of the so-called “disposable” worker:

• Over 91 percent stated that their commitment increases when their daily work is personally important.
• Over 98 percent indicated that they would be willing to take on difficult tasks and see them through to completion if they viewed the work as personally important.
• Over 98 percent believe that they are responsible for holding themselves accountable for their work.

These responses make it clear that commitment comes from within. It happens when people embrace the tasks in front of them, because they are important to them, and they make a promise to deliver on an outcome. Of course, their work is also likely important to the organization, and its successful completion will propel the organization forward; however, the buy-in to those goals must happen within the performer.

Helping Employees Develop Commitment: 3 Tips

Help people discover what matters and, more importantly, why it matters.

People commit to work that matters to them. However, understanding why something matters taps into intrinsic motivation and provides the resolve needed when the going gets tough and commitments are challenged. Learning tools like strength inventories can help employees develop this kind of self-awareness. This insight can help employees connect what matters to them with the work they need to do.

Challenge people to make connections.

Once employees understand their motives, they can learn to identify how their tasks are connected to those motives. An auditor in a large government bureaucracy once told me that she was committed to her work because she saw it as an opportunity to help people. Since her greatest concern was being helpful to others, her ability to identify the benefits that were due to people in need, through her attention to detail and careful interpretation of regulations, made her work meaningful and gave her a determination to succeed.

Encourage people to try new approaches and use different strengths to get the job done.

Many people labor under the false impression that they are good at only a few things and should therefore always use the same approaches to solving problems and interacting with people. Of course, people are likely to be more comfortable with certain ways of engaging with others, but the reality is that to fulfill their commitments and work successfully, employees need to use a broad array of strengths depending on the situation. Again, self-assessments can help employees understand their options and engage the strengths needed to fulfill their commitments.

Even though the workplace has changed dramatically over the course of my career, these lessons would have most certainly served me well at any point along the way. In fact, they likely would have served my father’s generation just as well as my son’s. Commitment has always been an inside job. The value of recognizing this universal truth is being able to apply it in the outside world.