Wake up, motivation!

Why do people start their first week in a new job with real enthusiasm, but progressively their interest for waking up in the morning and get in the office inevitably falls? I remember Corinne Maier in 2004, publishing what has been a real Molotov fire on the enterprise’s core today: her satiric and quite assertive book "Bonjour, Paresse"...or how to survive in a kind of system (corporations) unable to get employee’s commitment nowadays.

It’s funny to find out how business schools point out the reasons behind employees’ lack of motivation at work. In a recent issue released by Harvard Business School magazine we can read some findings about how management can "demotivate" employees. Nothing really new, actually, for all 99% of politically aware (or at least not silly) workforce: "Many companies treat employees as disposable. At the first sign of business difficulty, employees—who are usually routinely referred to as 'our greatest asset'—become expendable". Wasted lives, as Zygmunt Bauman clearly explores in his absolutely wise and assertive literature.

The magazine mentions a survey that David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer carried out on about 1.2 million employees at 52 Fortune companies from 2001 to 2004. The findings inform how employees generally receive inadequate recognition and reward: "About half of the workers in our surveys report receiving little or no credit, and almost two-thirds say management is much more likely to criticize them for poor performance than praise them for good work".

Everybody likes to talk immediately about this. It seems to be a concern. A couple of friends managing staff recently told me: "I don’t know what are people’s expectations about their job. They have a decent salary, they’re fortunate for having the chance to work, but are permanently complaining". And the best: "People should self motivate!". Great: it sounds as self medicate.

Key strategies for management opening gates of motivation

Some managers perhaps should wake up and consider three sets of goals that workers look for in their jobs. The investigation of Sirota et al. mentions:

a. Equity: Respect (r-e-s-p-e-c-t) and fair treatment in areas such as pay, benefits, job security.

A psychological contract is always present, not only for transactional issues documented such as salaries and labour conditions, but also for relational aspects of work. How people perceives others are being awarded and promoted determines their expectations about their performance and their outcomes. People is willing to do a task that will provide them a specific valued outcome. Such a value can be intrinsic (meaningfulness) as well as extrinsic (recognition, promotion).

Open communication, participation on decision making, involvement, are key factors helping here, unfortunately not really easy to find in corporate cultures where subtle discrimination prevails and management of diversity is totally unknown.

Anyway payment, benefits and job security are factors that at least, in my opinion, prevent dissatisfaction at work, but necessarily boost people motivation.

b. Achievement: "To be proud of one’s job, accomplishment and employer". Task significance and identity. Are people connected to the mission statement of the organisation? But...wait a second: Do they know it?

The "reason for being here" sometimes does not match with that mission. But it should be essential. The article mentions a strategy like "instil and inspiring purpose" among staff. Setting a clear, credible and inspiring organisational aim that goes beyond money. We talk a bit about it in the previous post "Psychological capital: seeking a meaning" (if you haven’t read it, don’t loose the chance).

c. Camaraderie. Promoting productive and good relationships into the social environment of the organisation. It’s not enough to have groups (and gossips groups, clans, and closed networks are not really necessary indeed). It’s about creating teams with some degree of autonomy and authority in subjects such as quality control or work’s methods. Quite a cultural issue as well: organisations with poor recognition of roles, but more "person" and "power" focused are hard to fit into this suggestion.

And that’s a good point to consider: what has to do culture with the "reasons for wake up in the morning and being there"?

Related links

Why your employees are losing motivation (HBSWK magazine)
Corinne Maier

Psychological capital: seeking a meaning

Jonas Ridderstrale, co-author of "Funky Business" (2000), keep on saying some old words, always valid and still alive. In a recent interview on La Vanguardia (March, 2006) I read what I think is the very sense of every organisation today. Ridderstrale mentions:

"...That’s because in a business, which is not conveying human values, which is not capable to create meaning, its employees are going to create products and services without meaning as well. Every professional in a company must be proud, beyond his/her earnings, because his/her job creates value for all society. Only in this way we also create psychological capital.

- Business’ proud? -the journalist asks.

- But very well shared. Business have many systems for allowing all managers to experience the success and enhance their self confidence, but very few systems for letting all those people bellow, to taste the triumph. Everybody congratulates bosses for good results, but those making possible these results almost never appear on the photography. Making everyone taste the success and increase their self confidence means to create psychological capital, which will be reflected on figures as well".

Lovely. These are the essential reasons for people doing things such as developing businesses, seeking a job or keep on working in these businesses. Since the beginning of time...

Is it going to be hard for businesses to adapt (and re-adopt) this kind of mentality?