You’re unhappy and unmotivated: You need employee engagement!
“Far too many people do not know how to enjoy even the simple things of life and create personal success. They expect others to entertain them, to create opportunity, and even to do the work. Many workers lack the skill and motivation to accept responsibility and accountability. They want to be led but don’t want to follow. They want to be taught but don’t want to learn. And when life deals a blow, they lack the motivation and skill to overcome adversity. Instead they seek pity and help.”
What a crock of crap…i would argue that these are all symptoms of defeat, caused by continual abuse by managers who treat their furniture better than they treat their people.
I submit that every employee on day 1 looks forward to doing meaningful work, at a good wage, to be trained and provided the tools to perform their job, and to be recognized and rewarded for having done well.
Unfortunately, many organizations treat their staff as “human capital” instead of humans, placing them under untrained managers, who learned management from the last generation of untrained managers. They are also subjected to (frankly) stupid administrative rules that seek goals of efficiency over human engagement.
If you truly believe that people “lack motivation” than you really do not understand what motivation is. It is the product of “understanding the value of what you do” and “having the confidence to be successful” and I submit is the organization’s responsibility to address both areas:
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Do your staff r-e-a-l-l-y understand the importance of what they do?; and
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Have you helped them have the confidence to be successful.
It’s important to remember that people (in general) are ALWAYS motivated, they just might not be motivated to do what YOU want them to do. While i agree that selecting the right employees is important, I think it’s what you do with them after you hire them that determines how well they will serve your organization – here are five questions to ask yourself:
- Did you follow through with all of the promises made to the person you hired? Or did you put them in a different job than you promised?
- Did you provide them with the training and development you promised them? Or did you say you can’t afford for them to take the time off for that?
- Did you put them under competent leadership? Or did you stick them under an abusive or untrained manager?
- Do you provide them with the tools and materials to do their job effectively? Or do you have mounds of bureaucracy and administrative bean counting they must endure to do their jobs?
- Finally, do you have programs in place to reward and incentivize intrinsic motivation, innovation, and self-direction? Or do you just focus on compliance to “that’s the way we do it here” mentality that kills the human spirit.
Employee engagement (IMHO) is really not that hard – start with treating your employees as human beings, treat staff the way you would want to be treated, and for god’s sake – get rid of those managers that you know you should have let go a long time ago. r/Chuck