There is a lot of talk about the rights and wrongs of working life. On top of the age-old issues of toxic workplaces, bullying bosses and gender inequality, we have 2020’s legacy: home versus office working, with its constant tension of employers wanting folk back in the office more days than they want to be in for. Many businesses try to counter these problems by piling on the employee benefits, offering duvet days, gym memberships and baristas serving up the perfect latte, thinking that these will entice people back to the office and engender loyalty. They are wrong.
Bribes do not work, other than in the very short term. A free lunch is all very nice, but it quickly loses its sheen and our job satisfaction wanes to its baseline level. Threats are even less effective: those who can, go elsewhere leaving behind the less marketable, probably less competent, employees and an expensive turnover problem to manage. A much more sustainable way is to understand what actually motivates us at work and to lean into that.
Interestingly, it is not money. Once we have enough to meet our needs (and everyone’s definition of ‘enough’ is different), money ceases to be a motivator, it is simply a proxy for something else, such as recognition, power or status. And it risks becoming a demotivator if we are not paid fairly, as there is little more deflating than finding out your peer is paid more than you. The two most important motivators turn out to be ‘Team’ and ‘Purpose’, and the biggest demotivator is a bad boss. People don’t leave jobs, they leave incompetent, bullying micromanagers, so getting this right is fundamental.
Brilliant Bosses
Having a brilliant boss is a no-brainer, as they will create the necessary conditions to motivate us: a functional, happy team with a clearly-communicated sense of purpose. However, there is a fundamental, systemic problem. We routinely promote the wrong people into management and we then disincentivise them from doing a good job. Firstly, we hand out management positions as a reward for technical competence in an existing role, rather than because we have identified someone with the requisite skills and appetite for the management role they are about to undertake. Even when they are temperamentally unsuited and would make terrible, miserable managers, we agonise about whether they will leave if we don’t promote them, and don’t spare a thought for all the people who will leave if we do. Then we don’t train them how to do the job, we don’t tell them what ‘good’ looks like and we don’t reward them for doing it well, often expecting them to be a ‘player-coach’, code for ‘carry on doing your old job, but take on responsibility for managing the team as well’. And then we disincentivise them from hiring and training up young talent for, in the inevitable market downturn, who is likely to get the chop: the wise, expensive sage or their younger, less expensive protégé?
Look at the Benefits
Companies spend a lot of money on employee benefits, without analysing whether their employees actually value them. A great boss can spend one-on-one time with their team to understand this expensive dynamic. A simple 2×2 plotting Perceived Value to the Employee against Cost to the Company (Segal’s Cost-Value Matrix) readily identifies the no-brainer ‘High Perceived Value/Low Cost’ benefits, and questions those in the opposite quadrant. In this example, huge pension contributions are not valued by employees, a call-to-action for a responsible manager to educate their teams on the importance of long-term saving.
Get Hybrid Working Right
A brilliant boss is also key to solving the hybrid working conundrum. They will recognise that people should come into the office to collaborate, for collegiality and for culture, not so that they can keep an eye out for shirkers, or to flex their micromanagement muscle. A great starting point is to focus on the needs of the business, identifying those tasks best suited to an office environment and those which are best performed at home. Deriving a hybrid working policy based on the proportion of time people spend on home-optimised versus office-optimised tasks (Segal’s Work Wheel) provides a logical framework that can win over the hearts and minds of office working dissenters.
Creating cultures that people want to work in requires an executive team and a board that genuinely value and prioritise workplace culture, empowering the business to invest in its managers, even in market downturns. In fact, this is the time when it is most critical: firing the middle managers who don’t have an obvious frontline function seems the rational choice when we need to cut costs but, with pay rises unlikely and redundancies rife, maintaining morale is not a nice-to-have; it is a business imperative.
And the beauty is that investing in culture is absolutely aligned with delivering medium- to long-term profits. Too many businesses have as their mission to maximise profits, or to build the best widgets, or to have the happiest clients. If they shift to focusing instead on the inputs – having the happiest, most motivated employees – then something magical happens. Motivated employees give their all because they want to, because they are engaged in the business, because they genuinely care. And this feeds through to the bottom-line. So if our leaders prioritise creating a happy, kind, nurturing working environment, not only will their businesses thrive, but they would be helping to build a better, more sustainable world.
