Motivating Today's Employees. Lin Grensing-Pophal

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СКАЧАТЬ enough, or are willing to settle for an employee who is merely good enough, you can replace anybody. You can fill the position, but can you fill the void?

      The costs of replacing a staff member can be substantial, especially if you’re replacing employees at top levels of the organization or employees who have very specialized skills.

      A 1998 study by William M. Mercer Inc. indicated that 45 percent of the 206 medium-to-large U.S. companies polled reported that turnover cost them more than $10,000 per replaced employee. One-fifth of the respondents indicated that the cost was as high as $30,000 per employee.

      Consider that the cost of turnover doesn’t just include tangible costs of recruitment.

      Some of the actual costs you’ll have are the costs of advertising the new position, possibly the cost of a temporary employee to fill in until a new hire can be added to the staff, the cost of a recruitment agency, and perhaps the cost of travel and lodging for your candidates. But these costs do not represent the actual or only costs you’ll experience.

      Your actual costs go beyond the costs of recruitment and selection. They go beyond the costs of orientation and training. They include lost opportunity costs, and those costs can be difficult to measure.

      Turnover costs also include a number of other intangible costs. For instance, consider the following:

      • The prior investment made in the training and development provided to the employee while he or she was with your organization

      • If the employee worked in a cost center, the cost of revenue lost while the position is being filled and while the new employee is getting acquainted with the business

      • The cost of lost customers or clients who may follow the former employee to his or her new position

      • The drop in productivity for other employees as they pick up the slack for the departing employee and the new hire until he or she becomes fully functional

      • The cost of the supervisor’s or manager’s time in training and developing the new employee (an investment that could potentially be lost again if the new hire decides to leave your firm)

      Consider, also, more global costs, such as the potential damage to your company’s reputation if turnover becomes endemic and the classified ad section of the local newspaper continually carries ads for replacement positions. Think of the effect upon customer relations if customers must continually deal with new employees with whom they have not established relationships and who have not yet attained the level of expertise necessary to provide exceptional service.

      If you’ve ever lost a valued employee and struggled to find and retrain a replacement, you know that some people truly are irreplaceable!

      Fallacy #9: I Can Motivate My Employees

      Supervisors and managers certainly have a major impact on each employee’s level of motivation and resulting productivity. But it takes a team — an entire organization — to provide the environment, the opportunities, and the framework for motivation to take place.

      You cannot do it alone. You can, however, work with the other supervisors and managers in your organization, with the hr department, if your organization has one, and with upper management to recognize the importance of motivation and to implement the appropriate activities, practices, and culture to enhance the motivation of your staff.

      Fallacy #10: Once a Motivated Employee, Always a Motivated Employee

      Motivation is not a destination; it’s a state of mind and it can be fleeting. As an employer or manager, you will never reach a point where all of your employees are motivated and you can sit back and reap the rewards of your efforts. Some employees will be motivated some of the time. Through your efforts to establish a work environment that offers opportunity, reward, and recognition, you can work toward motivating more of your employees, more of the time. But that’s about the best you can hope for.

      The journey can be a satisfying and rewarding one. It can also be frustrating. There will be ups and downs. There will be failures. Your work team will sometimes be disgruntled. Individual members may leave.

      Ultimately, though, you can have an impact. The impact is incremental and it can be transitory. But through persistence, vigilance, and a desire to build a staff of motivated individuals who work together to achieve the goals of the organization, you can make a difference.

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      What Motivates Employees?

      When Elaine was hired as a contract employee to do graphic design work for a small, privately held company, she looked forward to the opportunity to exhibit her creative skills. She didn’t expect, though, that she would be welcomed into the firm and considered part of the family. As she says, “I was shocked when my supervisor invited me to attend a department meeting — I assumed temps weren’t involved in those things. Then, at the meeting, I had the opportunity to give some pointers on a four-color process. That was motivating because I had the opportunity to show that I could contribute.”

      Another woman shares an experience that she felt was especially motivating: “Out of the blue one day, the owner of the company came by and gave me a $75 bonus for working on a project. I bought a freezer from another employee with the money.”

      Sue, a professional engineer, says that the most motivating thing to her is reporting to someone she respects — a mentor — and having that individual hand her new assignments. “I guess it conveys a level of trust,” she says. She adds though, that new assignments aren’t motivating if they come from individuals whom she doesn’t respect. “When it’s someone I look up to and whom I respect, it’s flattering to be chosen for an assignment. In other cases, it just seems like more work. It’s a subtle difference, I know, but it makes a difference to me.”

      “These things have never happened to me, but they would be motivating,” says an employee who doesn’t feel particularly motivated all of the time. “It would be great if my manager would say, ‘Why don’t you pick out a career-building seminar this year and we’ll pick up the tab,’ or if the company president would casually stop by just to say, ‘Hey, thanks for your comment at the meeting today — you have some great ideas!’ ”

      What motivates high performers? The answers may surprise you. It doesn’t always take money. It doesn’t always take grand gestures. Sometimes, as the not-so-motivated employee points out, all it takes is a simple pat on the back.

      A study by Watson Wyatt of 551 large employers and more than 500 employees done in 2000 found that the majority of those responding — 81 percent — indicated that the “desire to maintain good work reputation” was “very significant” in terms of their motivation. Other motivations cited were “importance of the work” (76 percent), “appreciation of others” (66 percent), “interesting work” (51 percent), “personal desire to please supervisor” (20 percent), and “expectation of financial reward” (15 percent). Note that monetary reward was not the main driver that we often believe it to be.

      Motivators for the 21st Century

      As the labor market continues to tighten, innovative companies are reaching deeper СКАЧАТЬ