What is Organizational Citizenship? Advantages, Dimensions, Practices

When employees are working at a job, they would know that some behaviors are expected of them. All workers will perform their duties in a way acceptable to the management and beneficial to the company.

They will also avoid all types of behaviors that are likely to be detrimental. When employees go above and beyond what is expected, the behavior is known as organizational citizenship.

Organizational citizenship behavior is not that important to the job, yet it can benefit Coworkers and the company through better efficiency.

It is separate from task performance as organizational citizenship behavior is unimportant to the task at hand. As important as the behaviors are, they are not included in the formal job description. People who engage in this behavior do all they can to help their work environment run seamlessly.

What Is Organizational Citizenship?

An organization’s artisanship is the employee’s willingness to go above and beyond. Employees perform positive actions which benefit their colleagues and business even though they are not included in the basic job description.

Several behaviors in the workplace generally show organizational citizenship. It can go a long way towards improving social and psychological environments in the company. Employees exhibited the five critical behaviors of corporate citizenship.

They are precious to the company. They motivate the team members to enhance their job performance.

Advantages Of Organizational Citizenship

People who engage in organizational citizenship feel that their work is more meaningful. They also have greater job satisfaction, and at the same time, engaging in organizational citizenship behavior allows the employees to have more control over the situation while helping others.

Experiencing more meaningfulness at work also makes employees vigorous. Engaging in corporate citizenship helps those whose roles might be ambiguous as it helps them find meaning in what they do.

A sense of purpose

Workers feel a more robust sense of purpose and work meaningfulness, which means that employees feel their work is essential and valuable for the companies.

Feeling in control

Organizational citizenship behavior allows employees to feel that they have better control over their work and how they do it.

Workers also get to decide what they want to put more time into and what they want to accomplish.

A better sense of some vigor

When employees feel they are doing great for employees around them or think that they are engaged in work, that means something prevents feelings of burnout.

Employees can have a new sense of purpose to continue doing the work, which helps achieve the company’s goals.

Clean up the role ambiguity.

Suppose superiors have not defined a job. In that case, leaders can use this as an excellent opportunity to make the employees’ position fit the work objectives and add elements that encourage organizational citizenship.

As time passes, roles must be redefined entirely or changed to better reflect the worker’s skill set.

If leaders are tech savvy, they can also work with the employees in the organizational citizenship behavior environment.

Better job performance

Experts say that organizational citizenship behavior leads to more significant job performance, which leads to optimum work quality and increased productivity for employers.

It also comes with higher interpersonal relationships, minimum conflicts, and lower time costs.

Encourage early-career workers

Organizational citizenship behavior helps people become engaged in the organization and encourages them to get involved in other ways to promote the behavior as a good idea.

What are the vital characteristics of organizational citizenship behavior?

There are different ways in which employees can show organizational citizenship, but there are some agreed-upon characteristics also, and they are mentioned here.

Altruism

Helping others without expecting something in return is known as altruism, which is a behavior that benefits others without any expectation of reward.

This organizational citizenship behavior is essential when someone decides to help someone else without expecting anything in return.

This likely takes the form of a worker choosing to help a coworker finish a project or a set of tasks in a business setting.

It can be done even though the work does not necessarily relate to what they have to get done on a regular day.

Conscientiousness

It is the tendency to do things well, correctly, and, of course, thoroughly. It is characterized by some sense of responsibility and initiative in completing tasks, reliability, besides self-discipline.

It is the trait associated with being organized, efficient, goal-oriented, and dependable, so conscientious people are also more likely to display organizational citizenship behavior, like assisting coworkers helping out in times of crisis and taking on additional work without being asked.

When employees go above, and beyond quality, conscientiousness is likely at work. Coming into the office early to finish some project, working to ensure that team objectives are exited the quarter, and developing a new approach or procedure even when this duty is not well defined or outlined in the job description are all ways that workers can amplify the trait.

Courtesy is important

Courtesy includes all types of behaviors that demonstrate respect and consideration for others. For example, courteous behavior includes being polite and respectful to colleagues, vendors, and customers.

Courtesy contributes to the workplace’s overall culture and can create positive relationships among colleagues.

This is when a worker is considered polite to those they work with.

This will look like a worker watching their noise levels if they have to speak on the phone with the clients or check in with Coworkers without troubling personal issues that can impact the performance.

Dimensions Of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Besides the characteristics, you should also know about the dimensions of organizational relationship behavior, and they are mentioned here.

Loyalty is a must

Organizational loyalty is the commitment, trust, or even dedication employees have toward the company, allowing for a sense of unity.

Individual initiative is the intention of a person to take independent action that benefits the company.

It involves taking risks, being creative, using your resources and capabilities to make something happen, and proactively providing constructive ideas and suggestions.

Sportsmanship is a must.

Remaining a positive and supportive attitude despite going through setbacks; sportsmanship involves taking responsibility for mistakes and maintaining a positive attitude even in challenging situations.

Sportsmanship also consists in being supportive and encouraging to those around you.

The principal means the employer stays in great spirits even when something does not go their way or when something creates considerable annoyance or frustration.

In a stable business environment, this could be explained by worker retraining or gossiping about rejected project proposals.

Civic virtue is essential.

Civic virtue is all about being responsible for the company’s well-being and actively contributing to its success, like volunteering for extra activities whenever needed.

This is when a worker represents a company they are associated with in a positive light, which could occur within or outside the business.

In addition, it encourages a sense of community and solid interpersonal ties between coworkers.

Besides, employees can engage in this type of organizational citizenship behavior by speaking favorably about the company to that outside edge participating in charity events;

the company employs in planning or attending company-sanctioned social events.

Prosocial behavior

Prosocial behavior or even helping behavior in the context of organizational citizenship behavior is defined as helping people with work-related problems.

Experts say that the elements of this type of behavior include cheerleading, interpersonal helping, peacemaking, and facilitation for

Self-development

Self-development is about people taking ownership of their growth and development by engaging in skills development, personal goal setting, and reflective learning.

Organizational compliance

It is all about employees looking forward to following the organizational rules and regulations besides values.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior Practices

As you already know, organizational citizenship behavior has fantastic benefits and benefits both employees and the company.

Hire Right

You can only include some things in your selection process, like showing candidates the organizer citizenship behavior your company encourages and taking a potential OCB fit into consideration when hiring people.

Your job description should reflect your company’s values so employees can easily decide whether or not those values align with their values. If your values resonate with them, they would be more likely to show for some instances, like acts of civic virtue, when they do not.

Using a realistic job preview allows you to show employees an actual day in the life of the candidates. This means you can show how people treat each other in your company and how people work and collaborate.

And in simple terms, a realistic job preview is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to candidates the type of organization citizens of behavior you would like to see in your company.

Organizations recruit high volumes of people using a pre-employment assessment tool. These tools can include native testing job sample tests. It will help measure a person’s conscientiousness or whether they are a good fit for the company.

The interview is also essential in joining this phase, and the hiring manager can highlight some examples of organizational behavior when they talk about the company or the team.

Involve management

Managers have a crucial role when it comes to encouraging organizational citizenship behavior. First, as leaders, they need to set some examples.

Suppose people see their manager as polite and considerate, supporting team members who can be good losers and participate in charity events outside work.

In that case, it will inspire them to do the same on their level, at least to learn to some extent.

Secondly, managers should praise the kind of organizational citizenship behavior they would like to see from their teams. An easy way to give some well-deserved praise in public to employees who have engaged in organizations’ risen ship behavior is during a weekly team engagement.

But OCB should also be recognized on the organization’s level, and this can be done, for instance, during the companywide all-hands meeting.

Another essential practice to have in place for something known as cheering for peers. This can take various forms, for example, at the end of the week celebration where people show gratitude towards their colleagues to let them know that they had a positive impact.

Employees can send their cheers by e-mail during the week, and these can be read in front of the entire company.

Rethink performance management

Some companies also include the employee’s OCB in the performance management process and appraisals to encourage measuring and rewarding formally.

Some great examples of how organizational citizenship behavior can be integrated into performance management include goals and objectives and evaluation and rewards besides someone’s altruism or other various organizational citizenship behavior types.

There is something to be said for gently encouraging this behavior by making it a part of the performance management process. There are several things to keep in mind, and some are mentioned here.

Firstly, you need to know that an organization’s residential behavior is voluntary, and these behaviors are not part of the contractual obligations. Evaluating and rewarding people based on something not part of the official deal is somewhat unfair.

Additionally, you have to consider that the people’s OCB can create stress as they might feel they do not have a choice. It also might generate a feeling of injustice as not everybody will have the same possibilities to engage in organizational citizenship behavior within personal circumstances.

For instance, people with a family with small kids might not have time to participate in external company events outside the office.

Managers and others involved in the appraisal process might only sometimes notice the employees’ OCB. They may miss out on the plenty of times when one of their team members helps a colleague with their workload or asks a coworker how their sick child is doing.

Conclusion

Organizational citizenship behavior is something only some employees would consider engaging in. However, it can have tremendous benefits for both the workforce and the organization.

In short, it is worth looking for OCB potential in employees during the hiring process, like actively involved managers in setting the right example and rethinking performance management to ensure that the organization’s citizenship behavior is an integral part of your company culture.