Do your employees work as hard as they possibly could? Do you wish they would? Do you wish they wished they would? It’s likely that your associates do not share your sense of ownership in the company’s future interests. And you can bet they care less about bottom-line performance. In fact, most of them are just focused on the social aspects of the job -- things such as paychecks, bonuses, benefits and annual raises are viewed as entitlements.
So how can management get employees to perform? Work Focused Improvement® (WFI) is the answer. WFI takes all facets of leading management thinking into consideration and applies it to pay system design. In doing so, it uniquely factors in both the social (culture) and technical (scientific) aspects of the workplace to reach effectively and efficiently move your employees to the Performance Zone.
Frederick Herzberg, the key source of most current management thinking, provides a good summary statement of his position: “The only way to motivate employees is to give them challenging work in which they can assume responsibility.” Often, in management circles, this is reduced to “money doesn’t motivate.”
For those doing purely non-linear work, these concepts are generally valid. However, in many instances they are not enough. Take the example of an engineer who is doing totally creative design work and still sneaks out of work for half a day to prepare his dirt bike for a weekend race, or the ski instructor who plays computer games while he should be updating his student plans. In today’s world, there is always something more interesting to do. Enriching a job with “challenging” work is increasingly difficult. The current smart phones afford more interesting challenges than most jobs, and how are you really going to enrich a job that is, for example, comprised of issuing invoices 80% of the time?
Alfie Kohn became popular with Fortune 500 companies in the 1990’s with his own Harvard Business review article “Why Incentives Cannot Work.” Kohn and Herzberg correctly arrive at the same basic conclusion: unconstrained pay raises alone will not motivate people to work harder.
Then you must consider Judith M. Bardwick’s thoughts on the matter, from her book Danger in the Comfort Zone: “Entitlement: People are complacent; they get raises, bonuses, and benefits pretty much as a matter of course, so there is no incentive to work hard.” She then makes a compelling argument that for people to perform best, they need to have some fear that there will be consequences for poor performance. At one end of the spectrum is entitlement, with fear on the other end. Earning is in the middle, and it is noteworthy that the optimum earning zone is closer to fear than entitlement.
There is the notion that a lack of money can be a bigger motivator than money. Herzberg recognizes this when he writes about humankind’s “built in drive to avoid pain from the environment. For example, hunger, a basic biological drive, makes it necessary to earn money, and then money becomes a specific drive.” So in essence, Herzberg and Bardwick agree that the fear of a lack of money can motivate.
Another cornerstone of current management thinking is the late Edwards Deming. He says: “The various segments of the system of profound knowledge proposed here cannot be separated. They interact with each other. Thus, knowledge of psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation.” Putting all gurus together gets you to the conclusion that while raising salaries does not improve performance, putting significant pay at risk will.
Most experienced executives acknowledge the successful use of straight commissions and piece rate incentives. Incentives become problematic when the work is non-linear, meaning that is not measurable through observation. Even for linear work, it is difficult to determine the baseline beyond which incentives will be paid and the pay curve that specifies added bonus for exceptional performance. Frederick Taylor style industrial engineers set baselines through scientific observation and analysis.
WFI suggests this will not work. WFI looks at both the social (culture) and technical (scientific) aspects. WFI sets baselines and pay curves by a proven method of objectively rating both culture and technical capabilities of the work group. WFI acknowledges other motivating factors of the job, including: achievement, responsibility, growth, advancement, trust and individual autonomy. WFI is the answer.
Nothing else works.
So how can management get employees to perform? Work Focused Improvement® (WFI) is the answer. WFI takes all facets of leading management thinking into consideration and applies it to pay system design. In doing so, it uniquely factors in both the social (culture) and technical (scientific) aspects of the workplace to reach effectively and efficiently move your employees to the Performance Zone.
Frederick Herzberg, the key source of most current management thinking, provides a good summary statement of his position: “The only way to motivate employees is to give them challenging work in which they can assume responsibility.” Often, in management circles, this is reduced to “money doesn’t motivate.”
For those doing purely non-linear work, these concepts are generally valid. However, in many instances they are not enough. Take the example of an engineer who is doing totally creative design work and still sneaks out of work for half a day to prepare his dirt bike for a weekend race, or the ski instructor who plays computer games while he should be updating his student plans. In today’s world, there is always something more interesting to do. Enriching a job with “challenging” work is increasingly difficult. The current smart phones afford more interesting challenges than most jobs, and how are you really going to enrich a job that is, for example, comprised of issuing invoices 80% of the time?
Alfie Kohn became popular with Fortune 500 companies in the 1990’s with his own Harvard Business review article “Why Incentives Cannot Work.” Kohn and Herzberg correctly arrive at the same basic conclusion: unconstrained pay raises alone will not motivate people to work harder.
Then you must consider Judith M. Bardwick’s thoughts on the matter, from her book Danger in the Comfort Zone: “Entitlement: People are complacent; they get raises, bonuses, and benefits pretty much as a matter of course, so there is no incentive to work hard.” She then makes a compelling argument that for people to perform best, they need to have some fear that there will be consequences for poor performance. At one end of the spectrum is entitlement, with fear on the other end. Earning is in the middle, and it is noteworthy that the optimum earning zone is closer to fear than entitlement.
There is the notion that a lack of money can be a bigger motivator than money. Herzberg recognizes this when he writes about humankind’s “built in drive to avoid pain from the environment. For example, hunger, a basic biological drive, makes it necessary to earn money, and then money becomes a specific drive.” So in essence, Herzberg and Bardwick agree that the fear of a lack of money can motivate.
Another cornerstone of current management thinking is the late Edwards Deming. He says: “The various segments of the system of profound knowledge proposed here cannot be separated. They interact with each other. Thus, knowledge of psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation.” Putting all gurus together gets you to the conclusion that while raising salaries does not improve performance, putting significant pay at risk will.
Most experienced executives acknowledge the successful use of straight commissions and piece rate incentives. Incentives become problematic when the work is non-linear, meaning that is not measurable through observation. Even for linear work, it is difficult to determine the baseline beyond which incentives will be paid and the pay curve that specifies added bonus for exceptional performance. Frederick Taylor style industrial engineers set baselines through scientific observation and analysis.
WFI suggests this will not work. WFI looks at both the social (culture) and technical (scientific) aspects. WFI sets baselines and pay curves by a proven method of objectively rating both culture and technical capabilities of the work group. WFI acknowledges other motivating factors of the job, including: achievement, responsibility, growth, advancement, trust and individual autonomy. WFI is the answer.
Nothing else works.