The Myths
There are numerous inaccurate beliefs about the goals of employees and
their motivation:
- Myths About Motivation
- People dislike work of any kind; most people don't care whether
they do a quality job; professionals are much more concerned about doing a quality job
than are non-professionals; if they are not supervised closely, most workers will try to
get away with whatever they can; people who have too much to do are more unhappy than people
who have too little to do
- Myths Specifically About Pay
- All that most workers care about is their pay and
benefits; people will never be happy with their pay; when employees complain about
their pay, they are really unhappy with something else; to a significant degree,
praise can be a substitute for money
- Myths About Generational and Cultural Differences
- There are major differences between generations in what people want from their jobs; there are major differences between cultures and countries in what people want from their jobs; young people today resent authority much more than young people did two or three decades ago
The Findings
The overwhelming majority of workers are shown in
The Enthusiastic Employee
to have three main goals at work:
Equity: To be treated justly in relation to the basic conditions of employment (especially pay, benefits, job security, and respectful treatment)
Achievement: To take pride in one's accomplishments by doing things that matter and doing them well; to receive recognition for one's accomplishments; to take pride in the organization's accomplishments.
Camaraderie: To have warm, interesting, and cooperative relations with others in the workplace.
It is therefore not true that workers just want one thing, such as money. Psychologically healthy people have a variety of needs.
Further:
The needs cannot be substituted for each other, e.g., non-financial recognition (such as a "thank you" from the boss) cannot substitute for money but money also can't substitute for non-financial recognition. All of the needs are important. The authors advise their readers not to believe those who tell them that they can keep costs and employee pay complaints down by various recognition (or other) programs.
It is not true that "workers will never be satisfied with their pay." On the average, 40% of workers rate their pay as "Good" or "Very Good" and 23% rate it as "Poor" or "Very Poor," The rest rate their pay as "So-So." Further, there is great variability between companies in employees' satisfaction with their pay, the range being 69% to 8%. These differences are found to correlate strongly with how well the company actually pays! Nothing surprising there: Employees know when they are working for a good-paying employer and when for one that seeks to squeeze the last nickel out of them. In this connection, the authors advise that employee complaints about pay not be "interpreted" as really about something else (boring work, inattentive supervision, etc.) Complaints about pay are almost invariably about pay.
Since the overwhelming majority of people want to be proud of their work, it is untrue that "most people don't care whether they do a quality job." They care a lot! A major reason for worker frustration, the authors discover in their surveys, is not being able to get the job done or done well because of obstacles such as poor equipment, insufficient training, bureaucracy, and conflict among the various parts of an organization. The desire to do a good job holds true for 95% of an average workforce. The other 5% can be described as "allergic" to work (breaking out in hives, no doubt, as they contemplate in the morning going to work). These shirkers constitute but a small fraction of any workforce but management often sees them to be the majority and institutes policies and practices (such as very close supervision) that frustrate -- indeed, demean -- the others. This turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby these others start to act as if they didn't care and, indeed, have to be supervised closely. It is a vicious circle. What a waste of the talent and the natural motivation that people bring to their jobs!
Dr. David Sirota, Chairman Emeritus of Sirota, comments: The main question for management, then, is not, "How can employees be motivated?", but rather "How can management be deterred from diminishing - even destroying - employee motivation?"
Do "most people dislike work of any kind"? Only when management makes the environment within which work is done onerous. Otherwise, work is a normal -- and often a highly satisfying -- part of a healthy person's life. A recent, related study by Sirota Consulting shows that while people are most satisfied with a reasonable amount of work, those with too little work to do are less satisfied with their companies than workers with too much to do.
The research reported in The Enthusiastic Employee demonstrates clearly that there are no differences in the basic three goals by occupation, industry, age, sex, gender nation or culture. People everywhere and in every station of life want to be treated fairly, be proud of what they do and for whom they do it, and have good relationships with their co-workers. Much of what is written about generational differences ("Gen X" being less concerned about job security and more resentful of authority), or national differences (e.g., Latin Americans are less interested in work than North Americans) is bunkum. So is the notion that professional employees are more interested in doing a quality job than are nonprofessionals, such as hourly workers. That slur on hourly workers is disproved by the data reported in the book.
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