Atypical Employment Relationships and Commitment: Wishful Thinking or HR Challenge?

Nowadays, simultaneously maintaining flexible working practices and commitment is an important topic for HR managers since they both can contribute to organisational success. However, many HRM researchers and practitioners are unsure whether these can go together as job security is often seen as a necessary condition for commitment. Since relatively little research has yet been completed, this article contributes to this discussion. The aim of this article is to explain how flexible workers can be committed. Since knowledge on the matter is very limited, it was decided to conduct an exploratory, qualitative study, observing and listening to welders and fitters in two Dutch companies. The results show that there are more congruencics than differences in terms of commitment between the two groups of workers (typical and atypical). Moreover, the findings also indicate that the commitment of atypical workers depends on a whole range of Human Resource Management choices. HRM for these workers does not begin and end with choices made about human resource flows and specific contract policies. Therefore, an active approach to the whole HRM territory (work systems, rewards, human resource flow, and employee influence) would seem desirable. It was found that all employees want employers to listen to their views regarding policy choices that affect them personally. Key words: Atypical Employment Relationships, Commitment, HR Policies for Atypical Workers Introduction "IBM has halved its number of direct employees from 440.000 to 225.000 worldwide but we still have the same overall number of jobs as before, around 500.000. We have just shifted their status. The group will never go back to full employment in any way. It got its fingers too badly burned in the 1980s" (Peter Hagger, business Director Global Services in Purcell/Parcel! 1998). Also, statistical evidence on a larger scale seems to support the changes in human resource flow policies and more specific strategic decisions concerning employment relationship policies as reflected in the comment above. In the European Union, 42 million people (27 per cent of the total working population) have so-called atypical employment relationships (CIETT 2000): non-permanent or temporary contracts, freelance contracts, and temping relationships. The last category refers to contractual triangles a 'menage a trois' between one employee and two employers - such as temporary work through agencies (TWA), personnel on loan, and labour pools. In terms of atypical or flexible work rankings, the Netherlands - the country in which the current research was completed - occupies fourth place in the European Union: only surpassed by Portugal (49.7%), Spain (47.7%), Italy (36%). More than 31 per cent of the Dutch working population have atypical employment relationships: 3.3 per cent do agency work, 14.4 per cent have non-permanent contracts, and 13.8 per cent work as freelancers. Only in the United Kingdom do more people work through agencies than in the Netherlands (3.8% c.f. 3.3%) (Randstad 2004). Therefore it is not surprising that one of the sessions of the third international HRM conference 'Innovating HRM? ' organised by the Dutch HRM Network in 2003 was devoted to 'Innovating the employment relationship'. Atypical employment relationships imply less job security for employees. Less discussed is the extreme challenge that flexible labour places on the HR function. Many HRM researchers and practitioners believe that increasing labour flexibility not only decreases labour costs, but also reduces HR managers' (and companies') responsibilities since temp agencies appear to reduce the time that has to be invested in recruitment, and rewards. Here, it is argued that these assumptions, and not only from a legal point of view - such as the forthcoming European directive on private agency work, are open to question. The concept of organisational commitment lies at the heart of any analysis of HRM. …