Redesigning jobs to motivate people
ELBONOMICS: Motivation is not about achievement, but the desire to prove one’s worth.
Iheard from some managers that they can motivate people to do their best without paying them good money. They’re telling me the best way to do it is to redesign jobs and make it enjoyable and palatable for the workers. The trouble is that, they can’t give me specific examples. Please help me understand it. — Clueless.
It’s not easy to understand all of these. For how can you motivate people other than giving them good money and exciting benefits? But of course, money is not everything. Money can buy a mansion, but not a home. Money can buy a luxurious bed, but not sleep. Money can buy an expensive wrist watch, but not the time. Money can buy books, but not the wisdom. Money can buy good food, but not the appetite for it.
Money can buy sex, but not love. Money can buy relationship, but not the respect of people. Money can buy blood, but not life. Money can buy insurance, but not safety against accidents. And so forth and so on.
That’s why many people even at this time and age are not so excited with material things. People should not be educated with the value of money, but the value of happiness in a work environment, including their relationship with their bosses and colleagues. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time, until another employer comes along to offer a better material package to defeat.
Since time immemorial, many dynamic organizations have developed many engagement and empowerment strategies so that their workers can level up for other important things like selfesteem, respect, and self-actualization or the fulfilment of one’s dream to do something good for the organization, in particular, if not the society in general.
Those three elements are familiar refrain from Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which is still relevant in today’s modern world. More than the basic, physiological needs of man, the best motivators cost very little or nothing at all. If you can imagine it, many engagement and empowerment strategies are purely saliva capital. These include a pat on the back, positive marginal notes on the worker’s printed report, a congratulatory text message, or a “keep it up” e-mail message.
On top of my mind, there are three basic approaches on how to improve jobs so that the employees may enjoy their work assignments:
One is job enlargement. It’s about the horizontal expansion of one’s job by embroidering it with different tasks using the same degree of expertise, but with a limited authority. This allows the employee to be responsible for the task up to a certain extent. At one time, I was complaining about an erroneous charge in the billing statement of my credit card. The moment I received my bill, I telephoned the issuing bank and was immediately responded to by a call center agent.
In about two minutes or less, the person on the other line reversed the P2,500 charge to my satisfaction without passing me to other persons with higher authority or without requiring me to write a complaint or anything like that. Can you imagine if that person passed on my request to his supervisor who is also busy attending to other customer complaints?
More than that, I felt happy for the guy who’s used to handling customer complaints. I think that “autonomy” given to him by management made him a bit proud of his job.
Two is job enrichment. It expands the job vertically by allowing assigned personnel to acquire and use higher skills like solving problems and making decisions on their own. Just like job enlargement, the workers must be given authority like performing quality control of their own work rather that passing it to the quality inspectors.
Other forms of job enrichment may include direct consultation with customers and order supplier from suppliers. This alone avoids the problem of “lost in translation” when another person or a boss is given the single authority to negotiate with customers of suppliers.
Of course, this can only be made possible if reasonable control measures are in place so that standards are observed and avoid excessive orders, among other things.
Last but not the least is job rotation. This is the most common approach. Employees are given the chance to choose to perform other work assignments, even those that are alien to their educational orientation or experience. This allows people to discover their hidden talents by learning other skills and at the same time to establish rapport with others from different departments, among others.
For better effect, rotation must be done at least once every three years so that the employees can enjoy full benefits. Also, another version of job rotation is geographical assignments so that the concerned employees can be near their residence or school, if they would want to complete college education or pursue higher education.
Not only can employees use and demonstrate their expertise with these three strategies. When done well, redesigned jobs and rotation could create a high-involvement organization where everyone can have that psychological sense of co-ownership.