Self-Devpt. Nuggets™

Do you want to have a lasting and sustainable training system in your company? If YES, then you must avoid the TRAP of trying to use money to motivate your employees. If you don’t you’ll keep training them and they’ll show little or no improvement in their performance.

Why?

Because money is like a chemical stimulant which helps the “receiver/user” achieve a “high” for a limited time period only after which s/he gets lowered to (and sometimes below!) the base state – no permanent IMPROVEMENT achieved in him/her!

Ask yourself this question:

Do you currently have any staff or employees/team members who willingly Go The Extra Mile (GTEM) on the job, without demanding material or monetary reward for doing so?

If yes, what is the payoff that keeps him/her motivated to continue working for the company in that manner?

It’s CRUCIAL that you find out what that payoff is for 2 key reasons:

a. It could give you insights into what you can do to keep him/her working that way, to the benefit of the company

b. It could also help you discover team members who are reaping undue personal rewards by exploiting “waste” points or loop holes in your process to reward themselves without your consent.

Both a. and b. happen a lot.

In the latter case, we have recorded cases of employees who were – for instance – diverting their employer’s products for monetary gain.

They found it was easier to do this by pretending to work late, so that they could carry out their pilfering and other naughty acts when fewer people were left on the premises.

To add insult to the injury, they would still turn in claims forms at the month end to request payment for overtime spent working after office hours!

The above anecdote proves that managing human resources in an organization can be quite a complex and messy process – filled with lots of intrigue.

However, when a best practice workplace organization system is put in place, the controls that are implemented drastically limit opportunities for mischief making on the part of the staff.

Indeed, best practice workplace organization effectively eliminates waste in man hours as well as process operations.

Basically, each and every member of the team from the shop floor to the CEO ends up with clearly defined Job Descriptions on which they are then assessed for productivity. In addition Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are derived and routine systems put in place to track, measure and analyse them for decision making.

Most importantly, rewards and recognition (as well as sanction) systems that improve career advancement opportunities for employees, along their lines of expressed interest are put in place.

When a system like this is established, and its feedback and reward systems are executed as and when appropriate, the need to use money as an incentive to get desired behavior from employees drops.

This is because each member will see that s/he will be found wanting if s/he does not play his/her role properly for the company’s operations to function effectively, leading to goal achievement.

Best practice workplace organization philosophies (like the 5S system) are powerful weapons for getting results from team members without needing to use monetary incentives that rarely endure in their impact.

Click here to contact me if you want to learn more about setting up such a system in your company.