The Supermarket Example

Having been involved in retail for many years I am still fascinated by how people manage themselves and others.  My local supermarket has had the same manager for many years and in that time I never saw him once.

A new manager has recently joined the branch and has downsized a store as he prepares for his retirement.  Has his countdown to his life of leisure dampened his commitment to customer service and management of his team - you bet you life it hasn't!!!

I visited a couple of days ago and he was on the shop floor being active. Interacting with customers, tidying up shelves, talking to the staff about floor displays and rotas for the following week and each time I walked past him I was amazed at how 'engaged' people where with him.  He talked - they listened.  They talked - he listened.  And after every conversation he checked that everything was OK and thanked that person personally for their contribution.  I heard him do that 4 times in just a short space of time whilst I shopped.

Then as the queues were big and every available cashier was working flat out, he got on the tannoy system and spoke with great passion about the offers in store and how they could tie in with people's plans for the weekend - BBQ treats, treasure hunts for the children, the latest Disney cards that people could collect (and how someone has recently won a great trip from the store).  He discussed new wines in the branch and how you could save 25% by buying 6 bottles.  Did this sound like a marketing pitch - NO!  I watched people in the queues glued to his every word and smiling (along with the checkout staff).  This guy certainly knows how to add energy to the store and make the shopping experience great for not only the customers but for the staff.

If you are in retail today think about whether you are engaging with your staff or just getting along with your 'tasks'.  When did you last say "thank you" or "well done"? 

This guy was interacting with his customers, acknowledging his staff and making the shopping experience pleasurable - would you like to do that with your customers/employees too?  It's not hard, is it?

Be the difference you want to see.....

And watch the results .....

Mastering Employee Motivation

← People Don’t Leave Organizations…They Leave Managers!

What Have You Done For Me Lately? How a forward focus on just getting results can impact your team’s performance →

Commitment or Compliance…It’s Your Choice

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Bob Woodcock

According to author Daniel Pink traditional management methods are great if what you want from your people is compliance. The problem is that most of us in leadership roles  require far more than that in the new normal that exists in these post recessionary times. Without a committed and engaged workforce our ability to create sustainable business outcomes is severely challenged.

Pink has done some ground breaking work in identifying the true drivers of better performance in the workplace. It turns out that for simple, straight forward tasks the carrot and the stick work well as motivators. For roles that require algorithmic performance, the concept of “if you do this, then you get that” works as a performance motivator. However, if the task gets more complicated - when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking - those kinds of motivators don’t work. We’ve known for years that money is not the primary motivator of successful business outcomes. Science has shown us that performance, and personal satisfaction, come down to 3 factors:

1.       Autonomy

2.      Mastery

3.      Purpose

Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed, to run our own lives. This is where traditional management methods actually get in the way of performance. In their book “First Break All The Rules” Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman identified the differences between what great managers do and what conventional wisdom dictates. Their findings indicated that without fail the managers that concentrated on following had significantly better results than their contemporaries:

§  Selecting for talent.

§   Set expectations by defining the right outcomes.

§  Motivate by focusing on an individual’s strengths.

§  Develop the people on their team by helping them find the right fit within the organization.

Defining the right outcomes and focusing on the individual strengths of the members of your team will have a dramatic effect on the sense of autonomy that you engender. Traditional management focuses on setting expectations by defining the right steps for your direct reports. Regardless of what your leadership role is within the organization (leader of others vs. leader of leaders) when you establish what the target or goal is with one of your direct reports and allow them to determine the right steps to success are you provide them with the autonomy that drives both personal satisfaction and improved performance.

The shift from being an individual contributor within the organization to being a leader of others is a difficult one to make. Most of us that have made that transition didn’t get much in the way of training for our new role. We know what has worked well for us in the past and when it comes to crunch time we reach back to those experiences and apply them with our direct reports. Unfortunately much of what we did as an individual contributor has a negative impact when it comes to managing for results with others.

There are some simple steps you can take to ensure that you cultivate a true sense of autonomy with your direct reports. It is important to remember that autonomy and accountability go hand in hand. Allowing your direct reports to determine what the right steps are doesn’t mean that you will be abdicating your responsibility as a manager to ensure that targets are met and successful business outcomes are delivered. It is imperative to the success of your direct reports that you have frequent check-in conversations and that you both monitor the progress to the end result. That doesn’t mean that you should look for a status update every time you talk with the person. Establish a schedule of follow-up meetings and stick with the schedule.

It’s been said that good people don’t leave the organization they work for, they leave due to a misalignment with their manager. That’s often driven by the fact that their manager has been determined to motivate them by identifying and overcoming what s/he perceives to be their weaknesses. The fact is that people don’t change that much. As a manager you are wasting your time trying to put in what you feel was left out. Focus instead on the individual strengths and try to draw out more of what was left in.

Strength based coaching plays directly to mastery. Each of us would like to get better at what we do. I don’t believe that anyone I’ve ever managed got up in the morning and started the day thinking about how they wanted to go to work and do the worst possible job they could. It was only when I began to understand behaviour that I could see how my actions were impacting both the personal satisfaction and individual performance of my direct reports. Once I was able to apply the science of behaviour and truly understand what the motivational drives and needs were for the various people I began to see the shift from compliance to commitment.

I’m not going to say that this is easy. For many of us in leadership roles one of our strengths is the ability to quickly and creatively problem solve… individually. When someone asks us a question we give them an answer. Unfortunately that response does little to create the feeling of autonomy within our direct reports. Self-discovery is another important piece of the puzzle for both autonomy and mastery. The next time a member of your team asks you a question directly related to a specific target or goal take a deep breath and before you answer them ask them to share what they would do if they were solely responsible. Just one question and then give them the time to respond. Clarify if need be but let them respond. That should be the start of a great conversation between you in which they actually find the answer themselves.

It truly is your choice to make. I can speak from experience on both sides of the issue and I have to say that I much preferred commitment from my direct reports. Your role as a leader of a group of individual contributors puts you in the driver’s seat when it comes to the level of engagement within your organization. In most cases this group of managers is directly responsible for the business outcomes of 70% to 80% of the workforce. Give them autonomy, mastery and purpose and watch them shine. Have great conversations and focus on developing their strengths. That’s the way to improve performance

How Can You Increase Employee Motivation?

Managerial Actions for Increased Motivation

from BuzHelp24
As we stress in this article, motivation is achieved through different factors with different people. It is therefore important that you find out these factors for each employee which can be put into action once identified. The best way of identifying these factors is to issue an Employee Appraisal.

If your business has a small number of employees that you can supervise and control easily, then you will probably have an idea what motivates each person and therefore not have to use the appraisal process to determine such factors (although you should use one for other reasons that concern the performance of your employees). If your business does have a large number of employees that you cannot control at any one time, then you may decide to delegate the task of identifying motivational issues to assistant mangers or immediate supervisors of the employees, etc.

For you to motivate your employees, you have to identify which approach to take: do you offer a financial or non-financial incentive? This will depend on what factors motivate the staff member but it may also be restricted by your company budget which cannot compensate for any wage increases or bonuses and therefore non-financial incentives have to be introduced. Poor pay may lead to staff being dissatisfied at work and therefore any non-financial incentives will not be effective for motivation. It is therefore important that you find the right balance between the two.

Financial Incentives

Increasing motivation through financial rewards is a method that is most common when businesses rely on the quantity of the output of employees. For those employees involved in production, you could issue a piece rate system where they are paid for each individual product they produce. In which case, they would be motivated to produce as much as possible in order to achieve a high pay: but ensure your quality control is effective to ensure customer focused areas are not traded-off for quantity. You could also introduce a commission payment scheme if your business relies on selling your product or services through the means of personal sales (telephone, door-to-door, etc).

You may even introduce fringe benefits instead of increasing wages or salaries such as company cars, private health, or interest-free loans from the business. These benefits are often valued higher than wage increases and can be less expensive for the business to provide.
Another financial incentive is the offer of a share of the company profits, say, 5%, which is split between your employees. This incentive can influence team working in the business but you may find that people benefit from other people’s work if they do not pull their own weight to help increase efficiency. It can therefore be said that profit sharing does not encourage motivation in all employees although it is highly effective in businesses with few employees. This is because they know that their performance will make a difference and will be evidenced by an increase in the business profits.

Sometimes staff may only have motivation to get a task done quickly without care to the quality of the outcome. In which case, you can introduce quality related bonus pay which determines their salary. This salary will be up for review twice a year and reflects their value in the business with respect to, for example, the standard they complete tasks as well as personal sales records, achievements, and so on. This will give the employee the motivation to complete tasks to a high standard and a desire to further excel in the future in order to gain a higher salary: and of course, the feeling of achievement (priceless).

Non-financial Incentives

You may feel that money is not an effective motivator in your business although it may have some effect in the short term: your employees may also see factors aside from money as prime motivators. For whatever reason you decide that non-financial incentives are more effective in your business, there are many forms in which they can be given.

You can increase motivation by giving employees more responsibility so that they feel their contribution is more valuable to the business and that their role is of higher importance. Further, you can promise the chance of promotion if they reach a certain standard or target. We briefly introduced the process of appraisal which is a huge motivator to employees. This is because they will be recognized for the value they add (or do not add!) to the business by reviewing their progress and achievements over a certain period.

The following are also motivators that can be introduced in your business. To some degree they can also be seen as processes that reduce job dissatisfaction:

Job Enlargement

This involves expanding the job of an employee that has them doing more work of a similar nature to what they already do. This may be allowing them to complete the whole task instead of just part of it, for example, packaging the products as well as manufacturing them. This process ideally removes the boredom out of the job by eliminating the repetitiveness out of tasks and allowing them to complete the whole process, further increasing their responsibility.

Job Rotation

This involves allowing employees to change the nature of their job periodically. For example, you may give the employee administration duties one week, marketing the week after, and then back to their original job of sales the following week. This cycle will then be on going. The purpose of this is that the employee, again, is satisfied by reduced boredom and also motivated by the achievement of increased skills. The business owner gains from cross-training and the potential for feed-back and improvement ideas.

Job Enrichment

Similar to job enlargement, you can enrich an employee’s job by expanding their tasks to give a higher level of responsibility in the nature of work they do. For example, they can be given the responsibility of ordering materials and making delivery arrangements instead of just manufacturing the products. This will not only expand their skills, but also give them an increased challenge (responsibility).

Summary

Without motivation in the workplace, your business will suffer from the lack of efficiency that your employees may fail to apply. This is because they have no incentive to perform tasks to a high standard or complete them on time. It is therefore important that you give them something to work for as a reward for their high level of performance, all being essential to the success of your business.

Everyone is motivated by different things and a majority of these factors are not money orientated: instead they react more effectively to incentives that offer personal recognition and achievement. In which case, you should determine what motivates individual people and further determine whether a financial or non-financial incentive is the solution.

There is a fine line between factors that motivate people and factors that prevent job dissatisfaction. In other words, some things do increase the level of efficiency in employees by reducing job dissatisfaction but are not motivators themselves. This is because your staff need to eliminate unhappiness in their job before they can begin to be motivated and this usually, and some say must, begin with an *acceptable* wage that they can live on.
BuzHelp24

Footnote:
The easiest and most cost effective way to recognise employee achievements is to send them a card with a personal message - sometimes this action can speak much louder than money!  For a range of suitable cards to motivate, inspire or celebrate success visit http://www.high10.co.uk/