Over the years I have come across several models of calculating levels of employee engagement and motivation. Whether that’s a Hewitt Model of Employee Engagement or Gallop’s model, all of them have there own unique strengths.
However when it comes to means of improving and changing that, almost all of them lead to some kind of action planning around pain areas. While I am in agreement with planning around specific pain areas, I have formulated my own theory of how to keep employees engaged and motivated. Through my experience I have rarely seen this not working in organizations.
So here go 5 salient features of my theory:
Keep them occupied: Nothing is more disengaging then sitting ideal. It’s the start of most of the problems. Like they say ‘khali dimaag shetaan ka ghar’….almost all of them are happier working hard and working late. They would all crib about late hours at times but its much more motivating situation than sitting ideal. For lack of better way to explain it the feeling of getting your salary after hard days work is an motivation in itself.
Intellectual pressure Not Delivery Pressure: The more you create a thinking environment where everyone is getting pushed to think new and think different its very satisfying. Most of the organizations create pressure on delivery and targets which infact often works in opposite direction and shuts thinking part of the mind.
Plan for Individual’s Success Not Failure: It’s very important that organizations create an environment and opportunity where individuals can look back on the year and see some personal achievements and not failures. Several organizations thrive on keeping unrealistic targets around everything so that there is always something more to achieve. While to some extent I agree with theory of stretch one must ensure an employee has some proud moments to look back upon. Trust me you can plan for such moments and it will be very satisfying for them.
Provide Variety: Get them to work on different aspects of a job and try their hands on multiple things. It will make them feel important in every aspect of organization, create skill enrichment and provide back up support for every job.
Enlarge Opportunity Size: If they have achieved and delivered X size, provide them with an opportunity to try their hands on 2X, once they do that provide them with opportunity of 4X and so on. Give them a chance to feel they are constantly growing.
Now most of the above things need not require job rotation, career planning and such other formal frameworks. I believe we are fortunate to be in a growth economy wherein it’s much easier to create such an environment. It’s no rocket science actually. If usual day of an employee is well earned, interesting and full of high, he or she is likely to feel engaged and motivated. Unless you make the usual life for an employee interesting, all kind of formal programs would achieve very minimal.
~~Rohit~~
Rohit Jain