Becoming Mr Motivator
What's your staff's morale like? If it's flagging exercise your motivational powers. Walter Hale explains how.
The wide-format printing sector has not suffered as grievously as some industries but there have been cutbacks and lay-offs and even today staff, perhaps even heads of departments, may be eyeing their workloads and wondering if it is sufficient to justify their positions.
The damage this kind of pervasive anxiety can be hard to quantify. But pan-industry research suggests that companies that succeed in an upturn - even if the recovery is weak - are those that focus soonest on the growth ahead. So now is the time to make sure morale at your companies is much higher than in Ferris's fictional ad agency. And building morale isn't a case of conscripting staff to bond on a wet hillside in Wales one weekend. Some clear the air exercises, possibly offsite, may be useful. But the biggest effect on your staff's morale will be what they experience everyday in the workplace. Here are a few things that might persuade your staff to focus on the future.
1 Help staff to get better. What do you think motivates your staff? External incentives or money may help but a new study of 12,000 diary entries made by US employees found that, in the words of Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile, "Making progress in one's work - even incremental progress - is more frequently associated with positive emotions than any other workday event."
Let's be clear here. This isn't an excuse for paying staff less - it's just that money alone won't drive staff to succeed. Autonomy, purpose and a sense of mastering one's job do not replace a decent salary, but they may be the crucial factors which make an employee much more effective.
2 Build trust. Downturns rust trust in the workplace. John Shepler, author of the book 'Managing After Downsizing', points out: "When things seem to be coming apart, the normal communication links break down just as suspicion and mistrust begin to predominate. Some news is always better than no news, even if it is the same old news. If people don't hear any news, they fear the news is so bad that no one wants to tell them."
Trust is essential if you are to recreate the work environment and emphasise the vision, mission and values that are crucial to the growth of the business. If there is no trust, the foundation for progress is flimsy. With trust, you can engage your staff in the future. Research has shown that, for example, staff perform better - especially in hard times - if they have a clear sense of where and how their work contributes to the company's performance.
3 Consider workloads. When staff leave, another employee inevitably shoulders some part of their workload. But how are those tasks redistributed? Are they just dumped on employee X by manager Y? Or do you actively encourage staff to advise how work is reassigned? If you take the latter course, you might get useful feedback on why employee Y, despite working next to former employee Z, isn't best suited to take on their tasks. You might also discover that these discussions spark broader, constructive conversations which help you manage the workload more efficiently and help build the kind of strong teams you're going to need to take you forward.
4 Create a virtual water cooler. In October 2007, the US tech giant EMC launched an online forum called the Water Cooler where staff could discuss anything from the effect of the economy to cost cuts. When one employee posted a request for constructive ideas to save money, staff generated 320 ideas including unpaid time off and lowering the temperature in the company buildings by two degrees. These ideas went far beyond anything management had envisaged. The short-term benefit of lower costs was matched by a less quantifiable gain: the use of such online forms increased the sense of community at EMC and that sense, research has consistently shown, is one of the traits that defines teams that perform well even in uncertain times. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the US economist and author of 'Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down', says: "For staff, knowing that their company cares what they have to say, encourages them to say it and trusts them enough to say it without prior approval or censorship is a gift of inestimable value."
5 Be careful what incentives you offer. The credit crunch is, on one level, definitively disastrous proof that incentives can distort human behaviour. Set people certain targets and they will meet them - even if they have to destroy the organisation in the process.
Yet incentives do have their place. The good news is that research by Dr Alyce Dickinson of Western Michigan University suggests that you don't have to offer costly incentives. She found that performance did not vary significantly whether the incentive was 3% or 100% of total salary. The mere fact that a company had an incentive plan was a more significant spur to improve performance than the size of the incentive.
Dickinson advises that the most effective incentive schemes are targeted at individuals, can be monitored daily (even if the reward is paid monthly), are systematically evaluated to see how they affect costs, performance and satisfaction and are part of a general process in which staff get feedback on their performance. She also says that non-cash incentives can be as effective in improving performance as dosh. One of the downsides of long-term incentive programs is that staff gradually start to regard the incentives as part of their salary. Unchecked, this will reduce performance. If the incentives aren't purely financial, staff are more likely to remember they are linked to performance.
A Wyoming company called Snowfly runs a scheme used by Avis, Hyatt and Time Warner in which employees are rewarded with tokens that can be used to play online games like roulette. The points accumulated playing these games can be 'spent' on a pre-paid credit card, a week working from home or use of the managing director's parking space when he or she is on holiday. Snowfly founder Brook Mitchell says that research suggests that an employer spending 1.5-3% of an employee's base salary can expect a 20-25% improvement in productivity. Those figures sound generous - and Mitchell has a vested interest in selling this message - but even if you halve the boost in productivity, such schemes are worth exploring.
6 Loosen up. Downsizing staff is painful but easy. Downsizing processes is complex and often forgotten. By loosening up the internal bureaucracy you may be able to improve efficiency, cut costs and liberate staff.
7 Encourage managers to promote good work. In most workplaces, positive feedback is rare, unusual or unheard of. Yet good news, especially after uncertain times, is good for people's morale. So encourage your managers to make sure they promote their team's achievements. Just don't let it turn into an internal bragfest.
8 Don't be a jerk. Sounds simple but with workloads up, timelines more critical and resources under pressure, the temptation for leaders to give the "We can do this two ways: the easy way [ie the leader's way] or the hard way" speech is stronger than ever. And the political (with a small p) nuances of managing are more complex than ever. Be careful not to use offensive jargon (calling a restructuring "right-sizing" is going to sound callous and smug to anyone whose close friend was let go) and don't over-sell initiatives in the workplace. The best way to ensure you're not being a jerk is to empower a few trusted team members to politely let you know if you're being a jerk.