Get pumped: How savvy organizations motivate and inspire [Canadian Business Online]
By Kimberly Silk, Featuring Wendy Woods
Imagine you’re a successful manager at a high profile company. You have a posh office and a sweet salary to match. You’ve been awarded an impressive stash of stock options, a company car, and access to a shiny on-site fitness facility to keep you nimble. Sounds like the perfect job, right?
Wrong. Research has long shown that perks and financial incentives are a relatively small part of the employee motivation solution. Says David Luke, president of FocusFit, a Kingston, Ont.-based human resources development firm, “The work itself must be satisfying. The motivation comes from the passion for the work, not the box it comes in.” That said, he recommends companies offer an incentive mix that is 5% transactional (salary and perks) and 95% transformational (personal goal-setting).
In Gallup’s ground-breaking 1999 book, First, Break All the Rules, the research firm showed that an engaged employee is a safer, more productive employee. A subsequent analysis in 2006 found that top-quartile workplaces had 12% higher levels of profitability and 62% lower rates of safety incidents than bottom-quartile workplaces. In top-quartile organizations productivity was up an unheard of 18% over their bottom-quartile counterparts. So what are the best ways to create this sense of engagement?
Try laughter. Creating a work environment that supports creativity and passion engages employees and can get companies laughing. Wendy Woods, principal of Watershed Training Solutions in Toronto, says motivation is fuelled by “living your purpose.” “It’s about being happy and joyful at work and that goes a long way toward being motivated,” she says. Woods teaches her clients how to bring laughter into the work environment to reduce stress, bring people together and energize the team. “When we create an environment where people are laughing and enjoying themselves, but are also energized and working hard, that’s contagious. It bodes well for corporate culture. Employees tend to be more motivated when they’re working in a fun environment where they are free to laugh.”
Dr. Gary Latham of the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto encourages employees to make errors. “The research coming out of organizational psychology says that if you want risk-taking and you want people to be excited and energized about trying new things, such as embracing change, they’ve got to feel comfortable that they can make mistakes and learn from them.” When it comes to motivation, Dr. Latham says people want just three things: “They want a sense of challenge, they want to grow, and they want to feel valued and appreciated.”
Phil Cady, CEO of Victoria-based leadership development firm CLSWEST, agrees that employees want to be part of an organization that appeals to their personal values. He says, “Innovative organizations have the opportunity to create some kind of additional meaning by appealing to the values of the individual, and inspire a higher level of motivation.”
What follows are the stories of three disparate companies and organizations — electronics manufacturer i3DVR, healthcare provider Trillium Health Centre and software vendor Intuit — that have found innovative ways to motivate their employees.