23 Organizational Commitment at FedEx – Isabella Sendejas

Isabella Sendejas is a third-year student double majoring in Criminal Justice and Business Administration.  This paper is part of a research project she completed for an Organizational Behavior & Leadership 1009 course in Fall 2021.  Isabella’s professor Yan Liu, said: “Structure of the response is well-organized and readable. Ideas flow in a logical sequence. Concepts are cohesive and writing stands together. Key ideas were logically presented and understood. Student provided for a clear and concise analysis on the submission. Student submission provided for a weaving of course concepts, materials, and outside readings in an excellent manner.”​

Organizational Commitment at FedEx

Overview of Problem

FedEx is a shipping and delivering company operating in many parts of the world. FedEx was founded April 17, 1973, and went global in 1984. With numerous improvements, the company now has a variety of shipping options and ones to accommodate for their overseas customers. With about 2,200 locations and 600,000 employees, they ship and deliver about 18 million packages a day. FedEx is constantly improving their work ethics to better enhance customer experiences as well as employee job performance.

Although FedEx is looking to grow and open more facilities, this has been put on a halt. The company has been facing a tremendous decline in their hiring candidates and maintaining employees. Employees get hired on and are told the expected workload, but on day one are doing two times that expectation (sometimes more.) Without the needed workers at FedEx facilities, the work that is “due” each day cannot be fulfilled. This puts stress on the employees and the customers.

The problems FedEx is having can be linked to organizational commitment and stress. This is due to the fact that the expected performance/work versus the actual workload given to employees (what is stated when hired) is false.

Current Insight

Currently I work at FedEx as a package handler trainer. I am the person that works with any new hire that steps foot in the building and trains them on the overall operations of FedEx. Right now, we have a severe shortage of employees, which is hindering our overall performance as a company. Every day we have a set number of customer packages to be processed and delivered (usually 55,000.) When those 55,000 packages are not all processed that day, we “roll freight” to the next day adding to that day’s total number of packages. This is creating an abundance of work to be done by a small number of employees. Our “on prim” (number of people on the clock) should be at least 130 to run an effective sort. During the week we have a maximum number of 100 people and the weekends anywhere between 60-75 people. This is simply not enough to finish the sort and succeed the customer satisfaction rates. Instead, this is creating too much work for the average package handler to handle on their own, which in turn makes new hires quit faster because of the overload of work. Along with this, operational managers and sort/building managers are not addressing this issue and expecting all package handlers to load 6 vans that have 300 packages each every day. This is burning out employees new and old. The company is more concerned about meeting goals every day and not how to safely and effectively do so without the pressure of management and the immense amount of work to be done.

Research Question

What actions should big name companies like FedEx take to improve their organizational commitment amongst employees?

Quick Analyzation of Specific Problem

A struggle with organizational commitment has always been present in companies. However, this has been a more pressing issue since the start of the pandemic. Companies are finding it harder and harder to retain employees for multiple reasons. To help combat this issue for companies, we need to analyze a “real-life” example.

FedEx is a commonly known transportation company of good and services. They have been hit hard by the pandemic and have since been trying to improve their organizational commitment. Looking at the causes of their low commitment issues, we see that a sudden surge of online ordering impacted them tremendously. This then effected the company’s implied stress, employee commitment, and employer-employee relations. However, if these effects are improved, the overall organizational commitment issue of the company would also significantly improve.

Discussion of Solutions

Looking more closely at stress, we can gain the understanding that stress is seen in every work setting. However, it is agreed that the pandemic has applied a new level of stress on employees in transportation companies. This is due to the overwhelming number of online orders needing to be fulfilled daily.

As stated earlier in the paper, FedEx delivers about 50-55 thousand orders/boxes a day. With the low number of workers and amount of work needing to be done, this is a perfect way to increase the stress of current employees. To combat the stress levels, FedEx would need to see stress as a positive instead of a negative. When working in a warehouse facility, we rely on our managers to show us the way to complete the goals for the day. This means we absorb their energy and work commitment. With that being noted, a Harvard Business Review mentions that “When crisis or challenging situations arise, these can be golden opportunities for leaders to demonstrate hardy responding to stress” (Bartone & Stein, 2020). A hardy response to stress could look like: “providing recognition, awards, and opportunities to reflect on and magnify positive results,” or even “providing employees with meaningful opportunities to express their own views on how to do things better” (Bartone & Stein, 2020). These where only a few of the ways to help employees feel less stressed; however, they can make a big impact if implemented alone. Another way to help employees feel like their hardships are being seen could be the “recognition that these mental health and well-being challenges do exist and that we can do more to help people navigate them” (Labate, 2021). When a company lets their employees know that they see the stress and causes of it, it helps employees know that the company will provide help and that they aren’t a company that doesn’t care about their workers. Along with this, the communication and feeling like your opinion/ideas matter are important as they can be beneficial in supporting teamwork as well.

When working at FedEx, you work as a team to sort, load, and deliver packages daily. When your team is not socializing, this causes a great deal of stress as it can become an overpowering workload for one person. Along with this, “social support from co-workers is an important element for positive coping with stress and reinforcing a hardiness mindset” (Bartone & Stein, 2020). Communication with your team at work is vital for an easy work experience. When you aren’t really socializing, you can feel alone and time can seem to drag on, especially in a setting like FedEx. This can even help with maintaining a better employee commitment as employees won’t feel like they are just another person at the job but part of a team.

This would go into the idea of improving how employees felt about their job and if they truly matter to their operations. Employee commitment is at an all-time low for many companies mainly because of the pandemic. Looking at FedEx, there was a sharp decline in employee retention. Trying to combat this, we can see that “employee commitment results in greater profits because enthusiastic employees stay, contribute discretionary effort, and engage customers” (Goldsmith, 2008). To do this, we must also understand how employee-employer relations can help change this. However, to change an employee’s attitude towards the company/organization, mangers need to understand that they should treat employees how they would want to be treated. Try to put yourself in their shoes and see how different acts can influence change. Marshall Goldsmith states “walking the talk, being transparent, communicating effectively, treating people equally, teaching, leading subordinates to increasingly excellent performance – and responding to subordinates as mature individuals who are owed fairness, the truth and recognition of their achievements” (Goldsmith, 2008). This goes back to being a team and communication, because if the respect is not there then an employee’s commitment will remain low.

Looking at employee-employer relations a little more closely, we gain the understanding that a good sense of leadership needs to be present. A study by Dr. Orlando Richard concludes that “Transformational leadership is supposedly the best type of leadership to inspire followers” (University of Texas at Dallas, 2016). Along with this, they note that “transformational leadership inspires subordinates to work for the good of the organization by motivating them through the leader’s strategic vision, communication of the vision and commitment toward the vision” (University of Texas at Dallas, 2016). When there is good leadership, we can see that it can inspire a better employee-employer connection along with a better work commitment. Along with these leaders/managers are the ones who can make the biggest impact as they work with their team in a daily basis. Managers should “also consider reorienting employee and team goals, work styles, and technology use around building connections and enabling well-being” (Fisher & Phillips, 2021). Doing so can not only improve their relations but the employee commitment and stress.

Application of Solutions

To apply these solutions within FedEx, it would look something like this:

To reduce stress:

• Talk positively about negatives
• Acknowledge employees’ hardships
  • Example: Giving recognition for doing something or for trying to improve skills
• Provide therapy sessions or an open-door policy to talk about what is on their mind
  • Example: Have mangers give off that they are a “safe zone” to talk about what is on their mind

To improve employee commitment:

• Help employees grow (inside or outside the company)
  • Example: Promote college reimbursement or ways to get prompted in the company
• Have a workplace of trust
• Encourage communication of ideas/opinions
• Provide incentives

To improve employee-employer relations:

• Have an open-door policy
• Communicate with all workers
• Get to know who you work with
• Give performance reviews
• Embrace success

Conclusion

Organizational commitment is very vital for a company. When there are organizational commitment issues, that is when businesses slowly start to fail. A company cannot succeed without its workers. Making sure that workers feel valued and a part of the operations is key to make a successful business. Ignoring this can result in poor organizational commitment and snowball into bigger issues. Knowing how to spot this issue and correct it is important for the future of a company.

In this case, we looked at how to tackle poor organizational commitment issues within FedEx by addressing stress, employee commitment, and employee-employer relations. Through this, we analyzed each point individually to find the best way to improve them. From this, we took credible resources to back our findings on how to improve each effect of poor organizational commitment. Doing this, we found that making negatives into positives, having open communication and trust, making employees feel a part of the operations, and being a team could help resolve this issue almost completely.

References

Company structure & facts | FedEx. (n.d.). FedEx. Retrieved September 6, 2021, from https://www.fedex.com/en-us/about/company-structure.html