"I love work" the Victorian humourist Jerome K Jerome remarks in his comic masterpiece Three Men in a Boat, "I could watch it for hours." But the energy and sheer verve of his book leave us in no doubt that, in fact, he certainly did adore his work as a comic writer. The success of the book, which has never been out of print, reminds us that the fruits of truly passionate and devoted work can even live on beyond our natural lifespans.
Most of us, though, don't seek immortality in our work but rather the supreme pleasure, right now, of complete focus and concentration on something we really want to do. The question is, how can organizations absolutely maximize the proportion of their employees who regard their jobs in this way?
Chief executives of most organizations rarely miss an opportunity to remind their audience (and themselves) that their people are their most precious asset. Certainly, in the highly sophisticated economies in which organizations operate today, where every player can gain access to a similar caliber and quality of technology, and where basically all players need to pay about the same for their financing, premises and other key resources - it is a matter of sheer commercial logic that an organisation's people represent the most crucial weapon in its bid for competitive supremacy.
The trouble is, organizations by no means necessarily put this thinking into practice by taking every step to ensure that every member of staff wants to perform to the very highest levels of which they are personally capable. Instead, the process of attrition of morale and energy can begin almost the instant a new employee takes up a position. For far too many people, the initial interview that led to them being given the job may represent the most positive and idealistic experience they ever have with the organization. All too often, it's downhill all the way after that.
This is not only tragic for the people involved it is also commercially nonsensical for the organization employing them. An organization whose staff aren't fully committed and giving their all cannot possibly be doing justice to itself at any level. Fortunately, more and more organizations - especially those in the ever more important service sector - have become attuned to the idea that there is not much point in employing people at all if you are not going to take steps to make them want to give their very best to you. All the same, its by no means the case that every organization thinks in this way, and even if the organization does think in this way, it still needs to put this thinking into practice.
There are still some chief executives and managing directors who think their employees will be motivated to give a great performance simply because the company has hired them. They see money as cure-all; their logic being that if they pay their employee enough they'll put up with anything and have no reason to grumble. But this is very faulty and outdated thinking.
Of course most people need to work today in order to earn a living, but while the necessity to earn a living may be the main reason why most people work, it does not follow from this that money is always the main factor motivating people when they decide to work for one organization rather than another.
In practice, people are likely to be swayed by a range of other, non-financial factors when deciding where they will work. This is particularly true of really talented people, who tend to have a good idea of the market rate they can command and will be looking for a prospective employer who can offer this market rate and other advantages. Overall, while the precise reasons why people work will vary from one individual to the next, it is nonetheless possible to make some useful general observations about employee motivation.
First of all, in today's employment market, where the notion of cradle to gave secure employment is in most cases an increasingly distant memory, people are more and more conscious of the need to maximize their employability. A big reason why people take a job in the first place, and why they might be motivated to give it their very best, concerns how they imagine the experience they are gaining will look on their CV.
Furthermore, they will expect ongoing development at the organization where they work. They will be very likely to go somewhere else if they don't get that sense of being developed.
In today's tough job market where there is strong competition among employers for talented people, employers need to understand that the training and development they extend to all their employees - and especially to their more talented ones - will not only make employees more able and more valuable, but will also act as a powerful incentive for them to stay. Of course, organizations are always at risk that their staff will leave, taking their new skills with them. Yet employees of organizations that don't develop their staff have little motivation to stay. This is a paradox, but it is one with a simple solution: accept that employees are more likely to leave if they aren't developed, and find ways to make people want to keep working at your organization.
Fortunately, there are certain constructive courses of action you can pursue to make people want to stay with you. And moving literally to the other side of the coin, the very fact that money is not by any means necessarily the main factor in people's decision to take a job in the first place or to keep working at a job once they have got it, means there is considerable scope for employers to make conscious efforts to offer their employees non-financial motivations that employees crave so much.
Ultimately, all these elements of positive motivation are contributing factors to the overall level of engagement the employee bring to his or her job. This term engagement is being used increasingly at an organizational level to denote the idea of an employee being fully intellectually and emotionally committed to a particular job, so that he or she wants to give to that job what is known as discretionary effort. This is the effort which it is not necessary for an employee to give to a job but which he or she wants to give to it.
The term engagement is useful, emotionally honest and authentic due to its connotations with commitment, bonding and even affection. But it is important to distinguish clearly between the process of engaging employees by helping them to love their jobs, and the very different process of hiring employees in the fist place following a recruitment drive.
Engaging employees is important whatever the potential of the employee, but it is especially crucial for truly talented people who are likely to have leadership potential either now or in the future. Engaging talented people needs to be a top organizational priority because they are by definition especially precious possessions. They are particularly likely to find another berth if they don't feel that this one meets their demanding needs for job satisfaction, purpose and sense of self-worth.
Dr. Charles Woodruffe is managing director of Human Assets, a business psychology consultancy which devotes itself to creating and implementing people management strategy for organisations, especially in the areas of selecting, developing and engaging employees.
