Is Everybody Happy?
Copyright © 2006 by Ethan A. Winning
A recent Harris Interactive survey concerning what employees want at work found that while only 36% of employed adults work for companies that foster programs that create a satisfied workforce, 80% said that these programs were important to them. (CCH Online 9/2/06) Over the past 60 years, these findings would probably be about the same. In looking at such figures however, you must put aside at least for the time being the vagueries of surveys and samples and the specific times in which the surveys are conducted.
You must also put aside your personal feelings about what is important to you since that just skews your perception of the survey. Your reality at a particular moment may be the reality of a very few. So, there you are sitting in your cubicle at 11:45 AM, or sitting on your sofa or at your home computer at 11 PM answering corporate email, and you'd rather be elsewhere doing anything else but this. OR, if you're a true workaholic and haven't figured out that the company doesn't appreciate your efforts, you're relatively satisfied. That's your internal mini-global picture at the moment. The point is, if you're satisfied, your needs are being met; if you're dissatisfied, your needs are not being met. You can toss out Maslow if you want, but his basic premises are still and probably always will be valid.
Still the Harris survey and another by Deloitte have the same iffy conclusion: "An organization's employee benefits are a key driver of employee satisfaction." Why is that iffy? Because, as Maslow would have told you for 40 years, any changes in those benefits can lead to dissatisfaction. If ever there was an era when a "satisfier" is fluid and can disappear faster than it ever appeared, it is over the last five years. The authors have also forgotten one principle of motivation: benefits and the like don't make you motivated; they only create an atmosphere in which you can be or remain motivated. In other words, just because a company pays 100% of your medical insurance, doesn't mean that you will work harder. Harris and Deloitte would dispute that, but they're wrong.
The other side of the coin is true: take away a benefit, and people generally will not work as hard...at least not until they get used to it or are replaced by people who have never had that benefit. Is there anyone here who doesn't remember the outrage of employees when dependent coverage was no longer covered by a company, or the company made the employee pay first 20%, then 30%, then 50% of basic medical?
What do employees want? I'll tell you. They want good pay however "good" is defined. They want health insurance especially if they've ever been hospitalized and seen a bill. They want to know what is expected of them, and they want tangible (money) and intangible (recognition) rewards for meeting those expectations. They want fairness, and they want at least a perception of equity. It is becoming more difficult in large public companies for middle managers making even $100,000 a year to feel equanimity when the president just received $5 million.
One must make a distinction between wants and needs, something which these surveys do not. A living wage and benefits are needs, not just what an employee wants. These really don't motivate anyone or if they do, they "motivate" only for a very short period of time. It's like the old Christmas bonus which was spent before Christmas, and now the employee feels nothing, certainly not gratitude which is fleeting under the best of circumstances. No, if you want to motivate someone, you must go past the basic levels of money and insurance, and create an honest and fair environment where people are appreciated and are shown appreciation. And you've got to give them something to shoot for.
In the days of the corporate ladder, people worked for promotion because, other than an increased salary and perhaps some power or perks, what came with it was a feeling of accomplishment and movement. This is true today at the highest positions in companies, and it is why CEOs often move from one company to another. There's nothing left to be accomplished at a company and, if they're haven't wrecked it and received their $25 million golden handshake, they are hired by some more needy company.
Want to know what will motivate you? Then think about what you can't do without. If your job became boring and there was no place to go including up, it wouldn't matter how much you were paid. If you were a senior partner in a law firm with all the recognition thereunto appertaining (law firm, remember?), and you were diagnosed with an inoperable ego or something more deadly, none of the perks would matter.
When you read these surveys, take the results with a grain of salt. My aim is not to make you jaundiced, but realistic. And if you're a manager, my aim is to make you miore cognizant of the other things that employees value. Today more than ever, employees with children, want more time at home, and contrary to "60 Minutes" and the minor folk at Best Buy, they don't want home time to be filled with work.
I asked at the beginning, "Is everybody happy?" That was a nod to an old vaudevillian named Ted Lewis who made this is signature in 1929. As managers, it is not up to us to make sure that everyone is happy. It is up to us insofar as possible to make certain that everyone is (relatively) satisfied. Company owners have a better shot at succeeding at this than we do, but every manager has an obligation to set goals, to define good performance and then to recognize it, and to make allowances for individual needs if not wants.
Perhaps flexibility is one key. For example, you can't do anything about the length of a commute, but if you have sufficient staff you can be more flexible with work hours. Courage is another key. Have the courage to fight for an employee. What the hell, if you're with Intel, you would have been one of the 10,000 laid off by the company anyway. At least you'll have a clear conscience.
And that brings me to my last point - for the time being. So long as companies feel that they can produce more with less - which means believing the "right" government statistics - we're all in a tenuous position. Might as well do the best you can in every position you have because, as I can tell you from experience, tilting at windmills is unrewarding and the windmill always wins.