systematicHR

At systematicHR, we sit around talking about (reading about) ideas like employee engagement and employer brand a lot.  These are quite simple concepts to understand, but actually quite difficult to implement and achieve successfully.  In terms of talent, the employer brand is a key environmental concept that directly impact talent acquisition and employee engagement is a part of culture that impacts talent retention.  More importantly than acquiring and retaining talent however, is that both of these are critical factors in motivating employees towards better productivity.

Published in HBS Working Knowledge, “Most companies have it all wrong.  They don’t have to motivate their employees.  They have to stop demotivating them.”   ((Sirota, David, Mischking, Louis, Meltzer, Michael Irwin, April 10, 2006.  “Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation,” HBS Working Knowledge.  Harvard Business School.  Retrieved from http://hbswk.hbs.edu on July 3, 2006.))  Just so we understand the connection between employee engagement and employee motivation, the core requirements seem to be the same for the purposes of this discussion, although I disagree with this a bit.  I’ll cover the differences in a future article.

Sirota et. al, detail 3 sets of goals that create a motivated workforce:

• Equity:  To be respected and to be treated fairly in areas such as pay, benefits, and job security.
• Achievement:  To be proud of one’s job, accomplishments, and employer.
• Camaraderie:  To have a good, productive relationships with fellow employees.  ((Ibid.))

Easy for me to disagree with Sirota (one of the current giants of HR research), but I don’t think equity is actually one of the main contributors of employee motivation.  The lack of equity is certainly a demotivator, but as we’ve mentioned here (on systematicHR) before, once total compensation equity has been achieved, employees don’t ramp up productivity because of it.

What is clearly more important is achievement and camaraderie.  Their steps to achievement were based on instilling an inspiring purpose, providing recognition, being an expediter for employees, and coaching employees for achievement  ((Ibid.)).  I’ll phrase it a bit differently than Sirota et. al.

Achievement is is more positively contributed to if an employee has a sense that they can affect change towards the expressed organizational strategy that the employee has adopted and internalized.

In other words, the sense of achievement is not about getting better.  Achievement is about creating the right attitude and environment in which employees can excel and feel good about their work.  To me, camaraderie is not a separate category, but an essential part of making the achievement part of the equation work.