Motivation & Engagement – need the know-how?
A recent article in HR Magazine cited research that provides alarming reading for those involved in employee motivation and engagement. In this blog I will discuss why we at Watt Works believe that a much more sophisticated, enlightened and flexible approach to employee motivation is required in the modern workplace.
But first, the figures. The research conducted by Globoforce shows that whilst 99% of HR leaders consider employee engagement to be a key challenge, such awareness does not seem to be reflected in practice.
From the 700 responses received it transpired that 86% of companies monitor employee engagement, yet amazingly 71% of those respondents only measure engagement through exit interviews! In other words, the only time the majority of companies actually take time to ask their people whether they feel engaged in their work is when employees have decided to walk out (often, presumably, because they feel a little less than fully motivated to stay). Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted!
At Watt Works we have felt for some time now that this just isn’t good enough. The government fairly recently issued a clarion-call to the business sector to make employee engagement a higher priority and this was music to our ears. The reasons we feel people are entitled to feel engaged and motivated in their jobs are not merely altruistic (although we believe altruism is a good reason itself) – there is a very clear, bottom-line business advantage to having staff who feel motivated and inspired in their workplace.
In a blog some time ago I referred to research carried out that showed the tangible business benefits of having engaged and motivated staff. Let me reproduce that again as it is highly relevant here:
“A study carried out by Towers Perrin assessed the degree to which 90,000 employees in 18 different countries were genuinely committed to their work for their employers. The study grouped employees into three groups:
• 20% of the employees felt Fully Engaged – that is they felt a sense of passion and commitment for the organisation that employed them that led them to go the extra mile.
• 40% were Enrolled – that is capable and competent but not fully committed in the sense that the Fully Engaged group were.
• 38% were Disenchanted or Disengaged
The Towers Perrin study found that the companies with the most engaged employees reported a 19% increase in operating income which contrasted with a 32% decline in income for those companies with the lowest levels of employee engagement. Assessed in terms of earnings per share the contrast was equally clear – a 28% increase in the companies with the highest engagement compared to an 11% decline in those with the lowest engagement. In terms of employee retention (another frequent headache for those in business, particularly in Human Resources) the companies with the highest levels of engaged staff showed that 90% of their staff were happy to stay in their current company, whereas those with the lowest levels of engagement employed a workforce fifty per cent of which wanted to leave and find another job!”
Higher revenues, increased EPS and improved staff retention – wouldn’t even the most hard-nosed business leader want a bit of that? It really is a no-brainer – so why isn’t it happening? We suspect that there are a number of reasons which we would like to explore.
First of all, we believe that many leaders, employers, managers, HR professionals etc simply don’t know how to effectively engage and motivate staff. Their idea of motivation may be limited to pep talks from time to time (creating a transient state change but, as we know, states rarely last more than a few minutes at most) and purely materialistic motivational processes, such as bonuses or commission structures.
Secondly, we believe there is a perception that motivation and engagement programmes are the sole domain of HR or managers at a senior level. It is believed that motivation and engagement must be part of a programme, designed and implemented by the ‘Person Responsible’ and that it is not something that staff or managers at other levels should have ownership of.
Such perspectives, in our opinion, are limiting and harmful. Firstly, there is much more to every human being than materialistic values. Indeed, the notion that no-one is moved or inspired by anything other than hard cash or ‘bright shiny things’ is quite offensive when you pause to think about it. Even in the workplace (perhaps particularly in the workplace) people are engaged, motivated and inspired by an extensive range of values and opportunities. In some instances purely financial incentives have been clearly show to reduce engagement as it seems to corrupt the satisfaction that can be obtained by acting for non-materialistic, altruistic motives. What I have just said is not mere fantasy-world wishful thinking. On the contrary there is a significant amount of experimental research that illustrates the clear limits of financial motivators.
The second point is that it is less than useful to believe that motivating staff should be the special preserve of a particular person or department within a company. Understandably, for accounting purposes, traditional financial motivational packages had to be structured in a way that they were formalised and made the special province of a particular department with processes, metrics and procedures etc. However, once we start to explore the many ways in which motivation can be engaged and job satisfaction enhanced without the need for people to be given things, it becomes clear than the use of motivational skills can be easily and inexpensively woven into the very structure of organisations at every level and on a day to day basis.
At Watt Works we would argue that knowledge of the principles of motivating people should be considered an essential part of the skill-set of every line manager and, desirably, should also be conveyed to all staff members. Whilst an investment may be required to skill and educate your people in such a manner, the pay-off in terms of the Towers Perrin research mentioned above shows that such bread cast upon the waves will be returned many times over. In the modern economic climate when cutbacks, redundancies and other austerity measures may be hemorrhaging the morale of the workforce, it is reasonable to wonder whether companies can afford not to ensure their staff are as motivated and engaged as possible.
In order to address the lack of knowledge about the motivational and engagement principles and practices we spoke of above, we at Watt Works have developed a workshop in the field of Motivation Skills. This course, offered at our training venues in London, Cheshire and Belfast, looks at what cutting edge research tells us about what motivates people to act and presents a range of skills to engage and inspire staff and colleagues using approaches far more flexible and empowering than such traditional exchanges as “If you do ‘X’, I will pay you ‘Y’!”
Tags: employee engagement, motivation, training
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