The Art of Motivating Employees

Putting a Face to a Name: The Art of Motivating Employees

 
Could a simple five-minute interaction with another person dramatically increase your weekly productivity? 

In some employment environments, the answer is yes, according to Wharton management professor Adam Grant. Grant has devoted significant chunks of his professional career to examining what motivates workers in settings that range from call centers and mail-order pharmacies to swimming pool lifeguard squads. In all these situations, Grant says, employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don't; they are vastly more productive, too. 

What are the pitfalls of ranking employees?

Ranking Employees: Why Comparing Workers to Their Peers Can Often Backfire
 
What inspires an employee to work harder? 
More money, more often than not. 
But what about being benchmarked against peers, asks Wharton management professor Iwan Barankay in a new study titled, "Rankings and Social Tournaments: Evidence from a Field Experiment." 

With the help of a "crowd-sourcing" website, Barankay set out to discover not only whether workers are interested in how they rank against their peers, but also what happens to their performance if they find out how they placed. His conclusion may leave companies thinking twice about the best way to appraise staff performance. 

Tuning into their Brain - Employee behaviour for enhanced performance

Organizations have some form of program designed to nurture high-potential employees. However a recent study by the Corporate Executive Board revealed that 40% of "high-potential" job moves  produce disappointing results. Disengagement of employees also is remarkable: One in three emerging stars reported feeling disengaged from his or her company.  Even more striking, 12% of all the high potentials in the study said they were actively searching for a new job.  Why do companies have so much difficulty in their succession planning? The Corporate Executive Board's research revealed that senior managers make misguided assumptions about these employees and take actions on their behalf that actually hinder their development. When dealing with high-potential employees, firms tend to make six common errors: assuming that all of them are highly engaged, equating current performance with future potential, delegating the management of high potentials down in the organization, shielding promising employees from early derailment, expecting stars to share the pain of organization-wide cutbacks, and failing to link high potentials and their careers to corporate strategy. In other words "tune into their brains". Having knowledge of how our brain functions facilitates enhanced performance. Key points to take into account are: Learning should be broken down into "bite-size" to increase itsne absorbency and effectiveness. Allow time for your people to integrate learning into long-term memory.  Fairness and respect gives brain a chemical boost. Stress inhibits clear thinking. Uncertainty arouses fear that decreases the ability to make decisions. Employees need some ownership over situations to better accept change. Engaging people in more active learning techniques improves retention. And here are some things you should do to keep your top talent on track: don't just assume they are engaged - give them stimulating work, a chance to prosper, and recognition or they will walk don't mistake current high performance for future potential - test candidates for ability, engagement, and aspiration don't delegate talent development to line managers - this will limit the talents access to senior members don't shield talent - place talent in live fire roles don't assume top talent will take one for the team - compensate top talent differently and creatively don't keep young leaders in the dark - share strategy with them
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