David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer at Harvard Business School has identified why employees lose motivation and morale decline over time. They found out employees are often looking for three key goals at work: Equity, Achievement and Camaraderie. They suggested numbers of practice that can improve those goals:
- Instill an inspiring purpose
- Provide recognition
- Be an expediter for your employees
- Coach your employees for improvement
- Communicate fully
- Face up to poor performance
- Promote teamwork
- Listen and involve
Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation – [HBS Working Knowledge]
I´m agree but I add one: change
Change is good for everybody and activate the people after some years working in the same area.
For example in sale teams, the managers change the area after 2-3 years.
* Instill an inspiring purpose
At this point in my life, the inspiration for getting up each morning is the fact that my checking account will be plussed up every other Wednesday.
* Provide recognition
I’ll have to provide some caution here, sometimes recognition isn’t enough in and of itself. I’ve got more recognition in the form of ribbons/medals (yes, the Army gives them to civilians too), pictures with generals, and other doodads to last me a lifetime. Sometimes recognition involves promotion, increased responsibility, and giving the employee what makes them tick.
* Be an expediter for your employees
I couldn’t agree more. Supervisors and managers are supposed to provide the grease that allows the people that get the job done at the lower levels done…from grinding against the upper echelons of the organizations. When middle management becomes a conduit for information from the “doers” to the “bosses” then all is lost.
* Coach your employees for improvement
Again, I couldn’t agree more. However you have to take the time to define the current state vs. where you think the organization could possibly go in the future. This takes vision and creative thinking. There appears to be a vacuum for this where I am working with our government.
* Communicate fully
Hell, I’d be happy if my “higher ups” would even communicate partially. In the past three weeks I’ve been promoted and demoted back again finding things out mostly by accident. Keeping people informed will take away so much of the uncertainty that seems to be so prevalent among today’s workforce.
* Face up to poor performance
Add to that…you can always do better. When you start settling for “good enough” solutions, it’s probably time for you and your employees to update their resumes.
* Promote teamwork
What’s that? We have an organization…that’s not anything like a baseball team’s roster.
* Listen and involve
So true. I’ve never learned a damn thing when I was doing the talking. Involving people will give you a very good chance to learn what the members of the workforce are thinking. In my organization, we seem to have a very loose grasp of reality and what the employees are thinking/feeling.
See you on the high ground, folks!
MajorDad1984
I think the article is only half true.
http://www.businesspundit.com/50226711/unmotivated_employees_is_it_your_fault_or_theirs.php
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