The Challenge of Employee Motivation

Steve Samuel has been recently promoted and is now the head of his department. Needless to say, he is highly motivated. His scope of management involves managing various section heads along with some clerical staff. Apart from that, he is obliged to take on the responsibility of the IT department as well.

Steve was a model of punctuality

He arrived neither too soon, nor too late. Punctuality was his watchword. In order to be fair, he introduced a time street for the staff. He came down hard on those who were late. And if you could not come up with a reasonable excuse, you would get a special note in your personal file – courtesy Steve.

Soon employees protested against Steve going too far. In particular, the computer department protested the introduction of the new rule because they worked overtime and at odd hours. But Steve was not prepared to listen. Everything fell on deaf ears in the name of fairness. He even pinned a notice on the bulletin board.

Employee motivation dropped

The staff decided to retaliate back by refusing to work at odd hours and by refusing to work late. People felt that it was unfair to give an explanation for a five minute delay in the morning when they were expected to work late after office hours.

There was a mass protest against the new system and also against Steve. This shocked him. He had to bow down.

What advice would you give to Steve? Where did they go wrong?

Error No.1: He took the decision without consulting the other section heads.

Error No.2: The notice on the bulletin board was an action, which did not leave any room for him to retreat. The result was that the staff motivation dropped considerably.

Error No.3: He showed lack of commonsense to understand the link between his actions and their motivation.

Error No.4: He swept like a new broom. He rushed into making changes before he had even built trust.

Error No.5: He did not take time to find out who were the dominant people in the team. Things are not always what they appear to be at the first sight.

Though Steve had a good management experience, unfortunately he had never received any formal leadership training. Employee motivation is one of the required attributes of an effective leader. You need to be conscious of the factors that lead you towards motivation.

The performance of your employees is a product of ability and motivation.

Performance = Ability x Employee motivation

Epilogue:

On becoming a leader, resist the temptation to make a flying start and plunge into the task of trying to solve all the problems alone and at once.

Avoid the trap of over supervision. One of the inevitable by-products of over supervision is resentment which has a direct link with employee motivation.

Over supervision makes your team members too dependent on you. They start coming to you with every problem, their self motivation and confidence drops and their initiative is stifled. Watch out for some of these traps when you take up a new role.

Good luck!