By Aileen Hallahan, Director, TalentScope Recruitment Solutions
When you start in any job, you’ll get an employment contract to sign and commit to, ideally before you start but sometimes not until you start in a new role.
This contract outlines the company’s commitment to you but also your commitment to them and what entitlements you have as an employee of the company. It’s your mutual agreement or commitment to each other and should be treated with the importance that it holds as a legal document. This contract is factual, black and white and will tend to remain stable throughout your career with that organisation.
But what of your psychological contract with your job/employer? This is an unseen document that you hold, which perhaps no one completely understands fully, including yourself at times.
In basic terms, your psychological contract is how you perceive your relationship with your employer – it is unwritten and most importantly very much prone to change over the course of your career with your current employer or indeed with any employer.
One way of understanding your Psychological contract would be to ask yourself, if your employer needed you to do more, go outside your comfort zone, do some tasks that you are unfamiliar with or not knowledgeable about – would your answer be “that’s not my job”- If so it’s likely you have a low Psychological contract with your employer.
When you have a high Psychological contract your actions are more likely to try to please and help in whatever way you can, regardless of the request or changes that are happening. Because you feel more psychologically engaged with the company, you feel you will go over and above and be committed regardless of what your feel your contribution should be yourself.
Typically the Psychological contract tends to follow personality types, – you will see that people who tend to go over and above to help and contribute will have higher psychological contracts with their employer and some may refer to them as Generation X type employees.
Those with strong Psychological contracts will tend to in the norm not complain about work, have good attendance records, few sick days and are committed to growing within the organisations that they work for.
Where you do sit on the scale of poor to strong
