Motivating Today's Employees. Lin Grensing-Pophal
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and things like that. I did some receptionist work in the lobby — answered phones and greeted people.” Later she went to vocational school to pursue a degree in accounting, all the while remaining at rcu. She worked in the accounting department for about two years, in customer service for about 14 years, and was recently promoted to a position in the employee services and development department.
What has kept her with rcu all of these years? “I would say the employees that I worked with,” Marczinke says, “I always had really good staff that I worked with. I always felt very stable. I never felt threatened that rcu was not going to be there. I always had good supervision — I think that’s important. If you have a good supervisor that you can trust and that helps you, I think that makes a big difference, and I was lucky enough to have that.”
You may notice that money wasn’t at the top of the list for Marczinke. In fact, when asked about the impact of pay, Marczinke says, “I always felt the pay was fair for what I was doing.”
Employee Commitment
Unfortunately, Marczinke’s attitude is fast becoming a rare phenomenon. A study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, the WorkCanada™ survey, conducted during the summer of 1999, polled more than 1,600 Canadian employees at all job levels and across many industries about their attitudes toward their workplaces and their employers. The results of the study indicate that employee commitment in the Canadian workplace is on the decline. Of those surveyed, only 49 percent indicated that they are committed to their employers, establishing the lowest level of employee commitment in the firm’s four surveys conducted over the past ten years. In 1991, the level of commitment was at 62 percent, but has fallen steadily since. At 49 percent, the Canadian level of commitment is 6 percent less than that reported by American workers in a similar survey.
In addition, 57 percent said they were not positive about their company leaders, only 52 percent were satisfied with their supervisors, and 60 percent were dissatisfied with their input into hiring and evaluation decisions.
The survey showed that five key factors drive employee commitment, with employer awareness of people issues topping the list. These issues involve: recruiting and retention procedures, valuing diversity, providing job security for good work, recognizing the need to balance work and family responsibilities, providing flexible working arrangements, and preparing people to work in a changing environment. Other key drivers of commitment in the Canadian study were —
• job environment,
• communicating business goals, strategies, and results,
• compensation satisfaction, and
• management performance.
The U.S. study identified seven key factors. In order of importance, they are —
• trust in senior leadership,
• chance to use skills on the job,
• job security,
• competitiveness of rewards,
• quality of company’s products/services,
• absence of work-related stress, and
• honesty and integrity of company’s business conduct.
Notably, the study showed variation between responses from Canadian and U.S. workers, in addition to responses from different sectors of the workplace and different levels of employees within the organizations. Employees in the high-tech sector reported higher levels of commitment than those in financial services or manufacturing. Healthcare workers demonstrated the lowest level of commitment. Commitment was also found to be related to the employee’s position in the organization — fewer workers and supervisors were as committed as managers and executives.
Why is commitment important? Watson Wyatt has determined that companies with highly committed employees had a 112 percent three-year total return to shareholders, compared to a 76 percent return for companies that exhibited low employee commitment. Clearly, commitment makes a difference.
Generating commitment among employees through motivation can be a daunting task. As we’ve seen, employees do not respond collectively to an employer’s practices or a supervisor or manager’s efforts; employees respond individually.
Employee Retention
Joan Stewart, author of the booklets 113 Tips for Recruiting Valuable Employees and 107 Tips for Keeping Valuable Employees (www.publicityhound.com/tips.html) says companies are responding to employee needs in a variety of ways. These include —
• flexible work schedules so people can take care of kids and elderly parents,
• mandatory paid sabbaticals that must be taken aside from regular vacations,
• advertising themselves as “gay-friendly” workplaces to attract gay job applicants during this difficult labor shortage,
• offering more and better training that contributes to the employees’ career goals,
• offering closer contact with executives at the top through things such as “Breakfast with the Boss” programs, and
• doing quarterly performance reviews instead of annual reviews.
Today’s tight labor market and increased desire for work/life balance is leading to employees demanding — and receiving — more unusual recruitment perks such as portable vacation time, outsourcing laundry services, and providing child and elderly care, says Drake Beam Morin (DBM), a global workplace consulting firm.
How can you find out what it will take to retain the front-line workers at your organization? The answer may seem simplistic — and it is simple. Ask them. What might asking them entail? With a small company, it could be as simple as talking to employees — and listening. (See chapter 6 for a discussion on communication.)
With larger groups of employees, or to get more quantitative results, employee surveys can prove useful. Employee satisfaction surveys can help uncover issues that need to be addressed before it’s too late. They can help management avoid losing a good employee because of an issue that could have been remedied. Another benefit is that employee surveys can indirectly communicate to employees that management is concerned about making the workplace a better working environment.
Finding Out What Your Employees Want
Do you really know what your employees want? To determine just how much your perception of what your employees want differs from what they really want, complete Sample 1 and, without revealing your rankings, ask your employees to complete the same form.
Sample 1: What Do Employees Really Want
“There’s a huge gap between what managers think employees want and what they really want,” says a credit union executive. “It seems as though the employees we hire these days aren’t looking for security in long-term careers, whereas the managers have already decided this is the path they want to take. They don’t understand that everybody doesn’t think the same way. I’ve been here for 22 years and I can’t imagine working anywhere else, so for me it’s hard to understand how a young person coming in doesn’t see it in a long-term perspective.”
The differences in the way you rank different aspects of employment may surprise you. Don’t assume you know what your employees want. They may not be like you — in fact, they probably aren’t like you. Take the time to discover what your employees really want.
How can you determine what motivates your employees?
1) Ask them. Go to each of your employees and ask them what things they like most (and least) about their jobs. Ask them specifically, “What are some of the things