Steve Jobs said, that you have to love your job, if you want to achieve outstanding results. If you love your job, then you are highly motivated and work is just fun for you. This of course leads to excellent results. But let us be honest – how does it look like in many companies in Czech Republic? How many people do really love their job and are extremely motivated to deliver high performance results?
The reality seems to look very sad: According to different independent surveys up to 80% of the employees are not really motivated or even highly demotivated or frustrated with their job. Of course some HR people might argue, that they have very good results in their annual engagement surveys – this might be right, but the question is, to what degree do employees really tell the truth in an internal company survey?
But let us have a look, why many employees are demotivated in their job and deliver only average or below average results? Those people are not demotivated in general, they do have a motivation, but usually for other areas than their job, which they see only as a necessity to earn some money.
I strongly believe, that one of the most important tasks of a manager is not to motivate his employees, but to make sure, that they are not demotivated. It is the responsibility of the employee to make sure, that he is motivated for his job, which he chose ( it was his free choice to work at this company ). But it is the responsibility of the manager to make sure, that the employee can develop his talent in the company.
Apart from the official working contract, which was signed by the employee and the employer at the beginning of the cooperation, there is the so called psychological contract. Both sides have certain expectations: The employers expect in particular high performance, loyalty and professionalism. The employees usually expect job security, adequate financial and non financial rewards, an interesting job content and career development opportunities.A good match between the expectations from both sides leads to mutual trust and engagement of the employees, a mismatch leads to mistrust and disengagement by the employees.
What are the typical killer factors, which destroy the motivation and the performance of the employees?
Here is a classical example: Although it was written in the job advertisement and the job description, that the employee should act as an entrepreneur and make decisions, there is an overregulation in the company and no real freedom for individual decisions. Every initiative the employee takes is blocked by internal rules and regulations and the decision by the manager takes ages – this is highly frustrating for a motivated and pro active employee. In the end, the employee will give up and “ resign “ internally or leave the company, as soon as he gets a better offer.
In many companies, there is also a climate of permanent control and mistrust. There is a “ overreporting system “ in place, which forces the employees to report every little detail of their work and the manager wants to be informed about everything.
The employees can feel this mistrust and therefore prefer to be passive and disengaged.
Another typical killer factor for employee motivation and engagement is the lack of communication and information by the manager. In many companies the employees see this is one of the biggest problems, which significantly decreases the motivation.
Certain managers have the feeling, that the more they know and the less the employees, the better it is for them, because they become “ irreplaceable “. They fear sharing knowledge and information, because this could, how they see it, endanger their position.
Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE and a very successful manager once said, that you can gain trust by being transparent, open and that you keep your word. Unfortunately many managers seem to ignore this and do not communicate in an open and transparent way with their employees.
What can companies do to implement a successful motivational culture, which increases employee engagement and performance?
It all starts with a real leadership throughout the organization. If the management shows commitment to motivation and enables the employees to use their talent and their potential, then the employees will follow them and will be highly motivated.
The management should practice an open communication and information policy and actively develop the talents of the employees. The famous Czech entrepreneur Tomas Bata once said: “ A noncompetent director jealously looks around to get rid of everybody who could be better than he, who can replace him. A competent director is out of breath by hunting and developing people, who could as soon as possible do his job.“
The renumeration and bonus policy should be clear, transparent and easy to understand – no complicated mega systems, which are not motivating and no one understands. Keep your compensation and benefit system simple and easy to understand, then the employees will accept it and it will motivate them. The compensation and benefit system should not only focus on short term goals, but it should also include long term goals. It should also support the team spirit and make sure that everyone is interested in the success of the company. Tomas Bata said, that his policy is to make capitalists from his employees. This means, that he wanted them to participace in the success of his company. This leads to very high motivation, because the employees have a feeling, that they also „own“ the company and therefore they feel committed to its success.
An important part of developing a motivational culture in the company is the implementation of an innovative and motivating Talent Management System.The company should identify the key motivational factors of their talents and take them into consideration, when implementing the talent management system. The motivational factors can be identified for example by using a motivational drives questionnaire, which should be based on the following categories: Information management, task management, people management, interpersonal management and personal management. The motivational drives questionnaire gives a clear picture of what a person thinks is important to feel satisfied/dissatisfied at work.
If the employees are highly motivated in their job, then they are engaged and committed to deliver high performance.
Finally, the most important part of implementing a motivational culture, where people love to work, is to create a climate of trust and mutual respect. This also means, that the managers should treat their employees as adults, who are responsible people and not like children, who just have to follow orders ( even, if those orders do not make sense ).
True leadership, which is an important motivational factor, means, that people trust and respect their managers and therefore will do the maximum to support them.Therefore it is extremely important for a company to develop true and inspiring leadership throughout the organization. I would like to finish this article with a quotation by Dwight D. Eisenhower, former US President about leadership: “The art of getting someone else to do something you want to be done because he wants to do it.”
Jörg Petzold, PhD.
Head of Talent Management Czech Republic and Slovakia, HUDSON