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When talking about employee motivation, it’s important to remember that different sized companies have different needs.
If you only have a few employees, then you know their names and something about them, I hope. If you are in a company like the one for which my wife works, there are more than 36,000 employees in Southern California alone. I would bet that the top executives of the company know very little about the individual workers in the organization.
The largest number of employees that I have been directly responsible for was 435. This was a division in a Fortune 300 company.
Not many executives are like Herb Kelleher, who was reported to know all of his employees at Southwest Airlines by their names, and their family’s names! If you can do this you are on your way to great employee satisfaction. Most of us are not that talented, so we have to find other ways to keep out team motivated.
With business pressures at an all time high (and they will continue to mount higher for the rest of eternity) with communications and innovations that grow with each day, top executives are busy multi-tasking like everyone else in today’s business environment.
The environment is the 64-dollar question. What kind of environment are you creating in the business that you are in? What are your managers doing? What are your people doing?
Employee satisfaction boils down to culture. What kind of culture do you have in your business? What are your employees doing and saying everyday? According to one recent survey of people in the workforce 75% answered yes to the question, “Do you like your job?”
Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton wrote a book called First, Break All The Rules. They took information from a Gallup poll of over a million people in the work force and came up with some interesting conclusions.
They found that the people who did the best job had a culture that they could refine down to twelve questions. The stronger feeling employees and managers had toward these questions, the more productive and profitable these companies were.
Some of the questions they posed included, “At work do I have the opportunity to do what I do best?” “Have I received recognition lately?” “Does someone at work care for me?” “Does someone encourage my development?” “Do I feel important at work?” and “Do I have a best friend at work?”
Do you see a pattern in these questions? People need to feel wanted, whether it is from the management staff or the people around them.
While there are a lot of different styles and cultures in the business world, it all boils down to how the people perceive themselves in the day-to-day operation.
Do they feel like they are part of a successful operation? Do their opinions count?
You see, they don’t have to have “fun.” Yes it helps if you do have “fun”, but it is not necessary to have good employee satisfaction.
Money and benefits are important, but it is the culture that makes the difference in the company.
We have a “Gung-Ho” award banquet every year. Everyone votes on who they think is “Gung-Ho” and we give them a trophy.
We have a lot of fun with this and it is just a little thing that makes a difference in our company.
Not everyone buys into the culture of a company, but that is the way of the world, and those that can’t need to find a place where they do fit in. It is quite all right not to fit into a culture in the workplace. What is not okay is to stay in a culture that you do not like – especially if you’re going to take your perceived misery out on those around you and bring down the team.
For all Herb Kelleher’s talents and efforts, even Southwest Airlines isn’t for everybody. The culture there is specific, just as every company culture is different. Corporations have different cultures within themselves.
If you look around and you like what you are doing, and like the people that you are interacting with every day, then you are part of the 75% of the people today who like their jobs.
Whether top management knows it or not there is a particular culture at your company, and they should know what it is. Hey, if you’re having a good time, making money for you and company, then maybe management won’t screw your culture up. If on the other hand if you need a little help from management, don’t be afraid to ask. And if they don’t help, maybe it is time to find another opportunity.
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