What can Managers learn from monkeys about motivation? How does China stealing our intellectual property have anything to do with motivation? How do traditional rewards impair the type of work modern business depends on? What drives the installation of most incentive systems?
Remember what we are talking about: incentive systems that use monetary value to drive extrinsic motivation to accomplish a short-term goal. What drives the perceived need for doing this? I think there are two primary drivers, first is the old standby “everyone else is doing it and I have to remain competitive” and although its hard to admit for some leaders, ‘a management philosophy that work in not inherently enjoyable and people can’t be trusted therefore we must coax people with external rewards and or punishment’.
Previously I cited research that found ‘just to get peoples attention with money as a motivator it has to be at least 10% of what they are currently earning’. Look at a bonus program and ask two fundamental questions; is the reward sufficient enough to get employees attention and is the employee just ‘double dipping’? Double dipping is when the target you set is NOT a sufficient stretch to justify the money, it really is what should be expected for that job or function.
Look at company performance reward programs, profit sharing, bonuses etc. Ask yourself the question, what are you trying to accomplish? Although the people that receive them appreciate them and aren’t about to give them back how do you evaluate their effectiveness? What would happen to employee moral if you missed targets and they didn’t get one? I was in a high-tech, high growth company that gave hefty yearly profit-sharing bonuses. They became such an entitlement that Human Resources used it as a recruiting tool and justification for low balling hiring salaries. People planned end of the year purchases by receiving this yearend bonus check. Guess what happened to employee moral when they missed a couple of years in a row.
I don’t think there is a work environment with safety hazards that doesn’t have safety goals. People are rewarded for achieving them and punished for having a poor safety record, companies shout their safety record from the ‘rooftop’, governments audit them on it. What happens all too often? People get injured on the job, and it’s covered up.
I always hated sick leave programs. It forced people to use it or lose it. Therefore, in order to not lose it you had to lie. When PTO (personal time off) came out I thought this is GREAT it included sick time and vacation time. Is it an incentive system or is it treating people like adults? They don’t have to lie about being sick to take earned time off. Companies could set the number of days at whatever they wanted, and people managed their own behavior.
I think a dramatic change to the old management philosophy about the need to ‘control’ people’s behavior was challenged by the recent epidemic. Telecommuting was accelerated by the epidemic and for the first-time managers had to ‘trust’ their employees to do their work without visual observation. Did it work perfectly? No, nothing ever does, but it disproved traditional management philosophies about incentives and ‘workers’. But I’m starting to see a push by ‘management’ to have people return to the office.
I frequently hear business owners rationalize different types of ‘ownership plans e.g., phantom stock’ for key individuals or just in general wanting employees motivated “to act like owners!” “to be invested in the company”. My response is, “the only way they will act like owners is if they have everything they own at risk to if the company doesn’t make a profit”. People are motivated to work for a variety of reasons. Although money is a part of that it is not what motivates people to go the extra mile.
It’s not necessarily that all programs are ‘bad or ugly’ it’s that these programs are too frequently the wrong tool for the job and company leaders aren’t asking or looking to see how the program can be taken to the dark side. In essence they are using the ‘wrong tool’ for the job.
In my next blog I am going to switch to intrinsic motivation, which is a key part of and harder to induce because we are impatient and not familiar with it, but when done correctly it will dramatically improve company performance and be the best retention tool you have. I will leave you with these questions; what can managers learn from monkeys, how does work design and motivation have anything to do with how I compete in the marketplace? Why does China have to steal intellectual property when they have so many University-trained people?
Here’s something to think about. In 1949, psychologist Harry Harlow placed puzzles in monkeys’ cages for a behavioral study and was surprised to find that the primates successfully solved them in a day without any outside influences. Harlow saw no logical reason for them to do so. What was their motivation? Their survival didn’t depend on it. The monkey’s didn’t receive any rewards nor avoid any punishments for their work. Think about this in the context about the work that people are asked to accomplish in your workplace.