systematicHR

If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon. ((Despair.com))

I found this despair.com entry quite interesting on several levels. First, it draws from the realization that there is more to motivation than a poster, an interesting speaker, or a great tagline. On a deeper level, there is an understanding that motivation must come from a deeper, less transient source. I’ve written about this (again and again) as being engaged with your work. This engagement comes when the work that our employees perform provides a sense of meaning, achievement, and fulfillment to each person. While I don’t discount that “things” can motivate, great incentive compensation plans should not motivate purely on the monetary value alone, but have to be tied to some performance metric that the employees each feel an ability to individually contribute to. Lastly, a pretty poster and a cute saying could actually motivate. I’ll call this branding. Your company’s employer brand (EVP) should motivate your employees, but it will only do so if your brand is a statement of truth and action.

Second, the statement that robots might be doing much of our work also has a great deal of truth to it. We’ve talked about this time and time again. Employees who are in jobs that do not require a great deal of engagement (repetitive manufacturing for example) are in for a shock. Many of these types of positions have been transitioning for many years into offshore production facilities. Often, considerable automation (robots assembling cars) also replace human work. The fact is that there is once again truth to despair.com. Workers who do not require a measure of engagement to be successful (as described above) are at serious risk for outsourcing or automation.