Maximizing Performance Through Workforce Engagement
Why Engage Your Workforce?
Why do we want to engage the workforce? Customer satisfaction is correlated with employee satisfaction, and employee attitudes correlate strongly with higher profits. Key employee attitudes are strongly correlated with profits.
Key Drivers of Workforce Engagement
Drivers of engagement include:
- Commitment to organizational values
- Knowing that customers are satisfied with products and services
- Belief that opinions count
- Clearly understanding work expectations
- Understanding how personal contributions help meet customer needs
- Being recognized and rewarded fairly
- Knowing that senior leaders value the workforce
- Being treated equally and with respect
- Being able to concentrate on the job and work processes
- Alignment of personal work objectives to work plans
Benefits of Workforce Engagement
Workforce engagement is rooted in the psychology of human needs and offers many advantages over traditional management practices:
- Replaces the adversarial mentality with trust and cooperation.
- Develops the skills and leadership capabilities of individuals, creating a sense of mission and fostering trust.
- Increases employee morale and commitment to the organization.
- Fosters creativity and innovation—the sources of competitive advantage.
- Helps people understand quality principles and instills these principles into the corporate culture.
- Allows employees to solve problems at the source immediately.
- Improves quality and productivity.
Understanding Employee Involvement
Workforce engagement begins with involvement: any activity by which employees participate in work-related decisions and improvement activities, with the objectives of tapping the creative energies of all employees and improving their motivation.
Involvement activities can range from:
- Simple sharing of information
- Providing input on work-related issues
- Making suggestions
- Self-directed responsibilities such as setting goals, making business decisions, and solving problems
Workplace Empowerment Explained
Empowerment means giving people the authority to do whatever is necessary to satisfy customers and trusting employees to make the right choices without waiting for management approval.
Principles of Empowerment
Principles involved in successfully giving power to employees include:
- Empower sincerely and completely.
- Establish mutual trust.
- Provide employees with business information.
- Ensure that employees are capable.
- Don’t ignore middle management.
- Change the reward system.
Common Reasons Empowerment Fails
Reasons for the failure of empowerment include:
- Management support and commitment are nonexistent or not sustained.
- Empowerment is used as a manipulative tool to ensure employees complete tasks.
- Managers use empowerment to abdicate responsibility or task accountability, accepting accolades for success and assigning fault to others for failure.
Achieving Successful Empowerment
To achieve successful empowerment:
- Provide education, resources, and encouragement.
- Remove restrictive policies.
- Foster an atmosphere of trust.
- Share information freely.
- Make work valuable.
- Train managers in hands-off leadership.
- Train employees in allowed latitude.
Exploring Employee Motivation
Motivation can be categorized into extrinsic (compensation, recognition & rewards, work environment) and intrinsic factors.
Compensation Strategies
Consider the effect of compensation on motivation, merit versus capability/performance-based plans, and team-based pay and gainsharing.
Recognition and Rewards Systems
Recognition and rewards can be monetary or non-monetary, formal or informal, individual or group-based, and tailored to the type of employee.
The Role of Work Environment
The work environment encompasses the quality of working life and employer-provided services such as:
- Personal and career counseling
- Career development and employability services
- Recreational or cultural activities
- Daycare
- Special leave for family responsibilities or community services
- Flexible work hours
- Outplacement services
- Extended health care for retirees
Foundational Theories of Motivation
Different theories attempt to explain the complex nature of motivation.
Content Theories: Needs Focus
Content theories try to explain motivation by looking at human needs and people’s efforts to satisfy them. Key theories include:
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory
Process Theories: Rational Choices
Process theories try to explain motivation by assuming that behavioral choices are made more rationally, based on expected outcomes. Theories include behavior modification. These models attempt to reconcile the psychological needs of people and the economic needs of businesses.
Recent Motivation Models
More recent theories of work motivation include:
- Job Characteristics Theory
- Acquired Needs Theory
- Goal Setting Theory
McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
Douglas McGregor proposed two contrasting views of management style:
- Theory X (Authoritarian Management Style): Assumes management must direct workers’ efforts, motivate them, control them, and modify behavior to fit the needs of the organization. This is a more traditional view of motivation.
- Theory Y (Participative Management Style): Assumes people are not by nature passive or resistant to change. Motivation, potential for development, capacity for responsibility, and readiness to work toward organizational goals are present in all people. The essential task of management is to arrange operations so that people can achieve their best goals by directing their own efforts. Theory Y relies heavily on self-control and self-direction. (Perhaps required for Total Quality / Performance Excellence?)
Note: Consider how Theory X/Y management styles and Herzberg’s two-factor theory (hygiene factors, motivator factors) apply to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, indicating where Theory Y and X might be most effective.
McClelland’s Trio of Needs
David McClelland identified three core needs:
- Need for Achievement: Corresponds roughly to Maslow’s 5th level (self-actualization).
- Need for Power: Corresponds roughly to Maslow’s 4th level (ego and esteem).
- Need for Affiliation: Corresponds roughly to Maslow’s 3rd level (belonging).
Behavior Modification Techniques
Behavior modification involves techniques such as:
- Positive reinforcement
- Negative reinforcement (or avoidance)
- Punishment
- Extinction
(Note: Process theories treat needs as just one consideration when people choose their behavior and place greater emphasis on expected outcomes, i.e., consequences or rewards.)
Motivating Technical Professionals
Technical professionals often exhibit specific motivational drivers:
- High need for achievement: Most productive when professional goals align with organizational goals.
- Need for autonomy: Achieved by participating in goal setting and decision-making.
- Professional identification: Identify first with their profession and second with their company.
- Desire to maintain expertise: Seek to stay current and stave off obsolescence.