When Outsiders Act as Insiders
In academic literature, contract workers often have a bad rap. According to the popular core-periphery model, workforces have a central core of ‘‘insider’’ permanent employees in whom the organization is willing to invest and a group of ‘‘outsider’’ contingent workers regarded as peripheral.
Given that organizations invest little in these contract external workers, researchers generally believe that these outsiders are less likely to internalize the organization’s values and are less productive.
According to researchers Lapalme, Stamper, Simard, and Tremblay (U Quebec at Montreal and Western Michigan University), most studies fail to account for how agency workers perceive themselves. Is it possible for “outsiders” to perceive themselves as “insiders”? If so, what are the conditions in which that would happen?
The researchers surveyed 191 agency workers from Canadian financial firms, assessing their perceptions regarding the level of support from both their supervisors and the client firms’ permanent workers, as well as the agency workers’ level of perceived insider status and emotional attachment to the client firm. Agency worker supervisors (within the client firm) assessed the agency workers’ level of interpersonal relations.
They report three findings:
1. Agency workers can indeed experience “perceived insider status.”
2. Those perceptions grow out of perceived support from supervisors and the client firms’ permanent workers.
3. Perceptions of insider status are linked to higher levels of emotional attachment and interpersonal relations, even among workers considered marginally tied to the organization.
“As our results suggest, it is not the ‘objective’ classification of externalized worker that is associated with worker attitude and behavior, but how the workers are treated by important organizational agents that leads them to feel like an ‘insider,’ creating greater likelihood of reciprocation of higher affective commitment and interpersonal facilitation even from externalized workers.”
Implication: Smart organizations should ensure that their permanent employees understand the importance of creating a supportive environment for contract workers. Of course, that may be a tough sell. For some permanent employees, the use of agency workers may be perceived as a threat, even if it may be beneficial.
Here is how to frame the message: “In some cases, the use of agency workers actually helps provide a certain degree of job security for permanent employees,” the authors write. “By using temporary workers to expand or shrink their workforce, organizations may shield their permanent employees from layoffs caused by numerous factors such as business cycle fluctuations or downsizing. Accordingly, managers would benefit from explaining why they have chosen to use agency workers, in order to reassure their permanent employees and ensure that they are more likely to support these colleagues.”
“Bringing the outside in: Can ‘external’ workers experience insider status?” by Marie-Eve Laplame, Christina L. Stamper, Gilles Simard, and Michel Tremblay; Journal of Organizational Behaviour (30, 919-940; 2009)
If you cannot find this paper in your local library, email me for a copy: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com
photo credit: The Other Dan