Employee engagement the key to productivity

In the early 1900s, the practice of scientific management was based on the premise that all work consists largely of simple uninteresting tasks, and that the only viable method to get people to undertake these tasks was to incentivise them properly and monitor them carefully.

To get as much productivity out of your workers, you are supposed to reward the behaviour you seek and punish the behaviour you discourage. This is the carrot-and-stick approach that involves using rewards and penalties to obtain desired results.

It refers to the old story that in order to get a donkey to move forward and pull the cart you would dangle a carrot in front of him or hit him with a stick from behind. The result is the same – the horse moves forward.

What Centum Investment Company’s management did was to hold out a carrot. By giving employees Sh1 billion to share among themselves over three years, they nearly doubled the annual salaries in bonuses in the year to March.

As a result, employees will work hard to reach their targets – if the money is what they want. But once the contest is over, they will revert back to their previous level of effort. Then management will wield a stick, threatening some kind of punishment if employees don’t do their jobs.

The people will then do just enough to “stay under the radar” and avoid getting into trouble.

While some carrots and sticks may work in crisis situations or as a stop-gap remedy, what they mostly do is promote near-sighted thinking, mistrust, cynicism and a diminished capacity to innovate and create.

The carrot-and-stick approach worked well for typical tasks of the early 20th Century – routine, unchallenging and highly controlled. For these tasks where the process is straightforward and lateral thinking is not required, rewards can provide a small motivational boost without any harmful side effects.

But jobs in the 21st Century have become more complex, interesting and more self-directed, and this is where the carrot-and-stick approach has become unstuck. That approach to motivation doesn’t work, especially in work that is complex, that requires creativity or involves problem solving.

We are not hamsters in a wheel, even though we might feel that way at times.

When it comes to organisational success, the keystone is employee engagement. High levels of employee engagement are not possible without effective communication in the workplace.

The three main concepts that leaders need to put into action on an ongoing basis are getting to know their people, being honest and transparent with staff and engaging employees by using two-way communication.

This gives the members of staff autonomy, an opportunity to build mastery in what they do and purpose – they will feel that they are doing an assignment beyond themselves. As an example, Wikipedia succeeded in creating the perfect culture of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

The business case is clear. Employee engagement programmes contribute to improved business outcomes. It makes sense that engaged employees will make a difference in a competitive marketplace by increasing productivity, inspiring innovation and delivering best results to clients and consumers.

But the harsh reality is that companies still face formidable challenges in making a difference in the workplace. In July 2013, the Incentive Research Foundation, a non-profit organisation, released a report that found that an astonishing 71 – 78 per cent of workers in the US reported that they are “not engaged” or “disengaged.”

Encarta was a job. Wikipedia was a historic mission. What about your company?

Mr Waswa is a management and HR specialist and managing director of Outdoors Africa. E-mail: [email protected]