After a recent post here, a friend sent me a link to this old article from the Harvard Business School, entitled Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation. I hate to keep saying the same thing here, but boy does this article hit a few nails smack on their heads. Your best employees, the ones you really want to attract and retain, are already motivated – you just have to keep them that way. (Actually, most all your employees are likely motivated to do well.) This article points to several ways “traditional management” demotivates employees, all of which are good points, but the one that I think is often hardest to re-train managers to do is to really communicate with their employees. To quote from this article:
Communicate fully. One of the most counterproductive rules in business is to distribute information on the basis of “need to know.” It is usually a way of severely, unnecessarily, and destructively restricting the flow of information in an organization.
A command-and-control style is a sure-fire path to demotivation.
Workers’ frustration with an absence of adequate communication is one of the most negative findings we see expressed on employee attitude surveys. What employees need to do their jobs and what makes them feel respected and included dictate that very few restrictions be placed by managers on the flow of information. Hold nothing back of interest to employees except those very few items that are absolutely confidential.
As another colleague said to me recently, this problem becomes particularly acute when your employees happen to be people long-trained to be inquisitive, to search for solutions, and to solve problems- your average observatory staff member, in other words. Keep these people out of the loop so you remain “in charge” and “in control” and you quickly lose anyone to be in charge and in control of.
Promoting open communications is really not hard; it doesn’t take much time and it is not overly burdensome on either the managers or their employees. First, meetings where issues are discussed and/or decisions made should be open to all to attend. Few will actually take the time away from their schedules to attend, but they will appreciate knowing they can and any that do attend obviously have passion for the subject and you’d be wide to keep them engaged. Second, distribute notes, minutes, or a list of decisions for meetings. I think this is best done in a fashion that allows people to pull the information from a web site or mail archive when they want it, but make it available. Three, managers should talk with their employees about results from these and other management meetings. No sense in everyone losing time at a meeting if one person can do and share the results with the rest of the team. Fourth, tell people the good and the bad. Tell people what’s in progress and what might be as well as what has been settled. Informing someone after a decision is made counts for much less than does discussing the process and the possibilities as they occur. No one likes surprises and no one likes to feel their input is not wanted or considered when heard. Fifth, ask people what they want to know, what their concerns are. Ask them what it is they want in their jobs. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to keep employees happy when you simply ask them what it takes to keep them happy. Why guess at the answer when you get the teacher’s guide for the asking?
When Scot was growing it up, it was occasionally said that he talked to much. At home, in school,…. As he grew up, though, he learned that we often get and convey more information more effectively by listening vs. talking.