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 Most workers believe their increased efforts will accrue rewards to others. Management needs to send a new signal.
I've run across a startling statistic that managers should pay attention to. Lots of statistics may be worth ignoring, but not this one.
The most accomplished pollster of the American workplace, Daniel Yankelovich, published this statistic in a survey a few years ago: 93 percent of American workers believe that if they work harder or better, somebody else gets the payoff.
Now think about that. Nine out of ten American workers feel that if they are more productive, they will not personally receive any rewards for their work. According to the survey, this huge majority of workers believes that the two parties who will gain from their harder work are managers who are high in the organization and shareholders.
Is there any wonder, then, that we have a motivation problem
in the American workplace? How can we expect gains in productivity
when most of us feel that nothing will accrue to us personally
for making such gains? The hourly wage and salary systems
that we have in place - systems with no provisions for rewarding
individuals and groups for their positive contributions -
are psychologically bankrupt because they violate a very important
principle of human psychology, the "WII-FM principle."
Most people are tuned into this very important frequency
all the time; the station's call letters, WII-FM, stand for
"What's in it - for me?"
If this station is naturally so powerful and present, how can we continue to install systems in our organizations that so clearly ignore the WII-FM principle? My guess is that our systems are from the past, when people's reward for work was keeping their jobs. That used to be enough, but it isn't any longer.
The specialists in human resource management who study compensation
systems agree that pay-for-performance systems are on the
upswing because high performers aren't about to stay where
there isn't paydirt. The American Productivity Center in Houston
published a report that indicates how many companies have
gone to incentive pay and gain-sharing and that the more competitive
the industry, the higher the percentage of pay-for-performance
companies. Bureaucratic pay systems attract and create bureaucratic
mentalities, those who would rather be safe than earn at their
level of accomplishment. The new systems are geared as much
toward achieving future objectives as toward rewarding past
performance.
We see examples of entrepreneurial organizations, like Southwest
Airlines (and you know the ones in your local area), sharing
ownership and profits with all their employees and contributors.
And predictably, they are more productive organizations than
their competitors, who are still locked in the old models
of rewards and incentives.
While monetary incentives are extremely important to maintaining the WII-FM principle, the simple act of providing healthful and nutritious doses of sincere appreciation is still an area of potentially enormous improvement for managers. Even though it's been said endless times, managers often are too busy to remember that simple, sincere praise is the most available, yet least used, of all their tools for creating a sense of value among employees. Verbal praise is one of those things that is common sense but not common practice.
At a mid-sized company in Kansas City that I have worked with, the employees choose who among their peers has done the best job the last quarter and who will receive special recognition. The company provides a token monetary gift, but the real reward is being called up by your peers to gain their applause as they read your accomplishments to the rest of the company at the quarterly awards breakfast.
After one of the awards breakfasts, I overheard a conversation between an employee who had been honored and one of her colleagues: "Well, today makes up for all those nights until 10 and 11 o'clock in the office, doesn't it?" the friend suggested. The honoree replied, with a beaming grin, "It sure does."
Five more years of loyalty and hard work had just been fostered because the recognition component of the WII-FM principle had been used.
As a former director of human resources for a large organization, I will admit that there are no perfect or even easy ways to make organizations recognize individual merit or group contributions. But, while not easy, the good news is that many very viable examples, close to home and elsewhere, are emerging that show what happens when everyone in the organization feels the psychic and monetary rewards for good work.
America will always need to improve its productive efforts, especially in the face of global competition. But we can do something for ourselves. We can start doing the things that will turn that 93 percent majority who anticipate no reward for improved productivity into a minority.
Wouldn't it be fantastic to hear employees say, "My organization is great at capturing my good ideas. And I plan to keep providing them because the rewards for being there are very real."
Wouldn't that be something? |
