The relationship between intrinsic rewards and affective commitment among support staff at Holiday Villa Hotel, Selangor / Noor Zalikha Mohd Radzif

Intrinsic reward is a non-monetary remuneration that an employee gets from the job that he/she does. Research has shown that intrinsic rewards go a long way in making a worker gives his/her best in the job. Hence, it is very important to create a work environment that has this type of reward embedded within the system. Unfortunately, selecting the right kind of intrinsic reward to help build up employees’ affective commitment has always been an issue in the human resource department of many organizations, including in the hotel industry. This study aims to investigate, using Social Exchange Theory, the relationship between intrinsic rewards and affective commitment, as well as the types of intrinsic rewards that affect employees’ affective commitment. It uses the questionnaire as the instrument of data collection to the support staff of a five-star hotel in Selangor. Thirty two questions are developed, placed in three
categories, namely demographic information (6 questions), intrinsic rewards (18 questions), and affective commitment (8 questions). The intrinsic rewards examined are ‘recognition’, ‘promotion’, and ‘feedback’, whereby respondents were asked if the particular intrinsic reward has an effect on their affective commitment. A total of 120 (91%) questionnaires were returned. Descriptive statistics and correlation had been carried out and the results reveal that the data the feedback has the highest value with (mean=3.97, SD=0.438), Compare to ‘recognition’ intrinsic reward has the lowest impact on affective commitment (mean=3.84, SD=0.500). As for correlation, it is found that the strongest correlation is ‘recognition’ (r=0.501**) compared to ‘promotion’ that
has a moderate correlation (r=0.451**). In summary, the study indicates that ‘recognition’, ‘promotion’ and ‘feedback’ are good intrinsic reward choices that
organizations can use to increase the affective commitment of their employees.