Charles Green of the Trusted Advisor blog has a great post today which examines research that Gallup has done on employee engagement and the correlation between intrinsic motivation and profitable performance.
Gallup research results show the crucial role that supervisors play in worker well-being and engagement, particularly those supervisors who focus on employee strengths and positive characteristics. In view of these insights, Green points out the fallacy of the often accepted business wisdom that people are primarily motivated by extrinsic rewards.
I have to agree. Organizational interest in extrinsic rewards, particularly in incentives, seems to be at an all-time high today. What's behind this?
Part of the answer, I believe, is what Bruce Tulgan (author of It's OK to Be the Boss), whose video appears in a recent post on the Brazen Careerist blog, calls "The Undermanagement Epidemic". He talks about the trend to "hands-off management", which has taken us to a point where supervisory and management skills are undervalued and underdemanded, where supervisors and managers are treated and appraised more like individual contributors than leaders of people. And we are racing to fill the performance gap that results from undermanaging with incentives, in the hopes that a well-designed reward plan will free us from the need to provide active and positive supervision to workers.
It all brings us back to a basic truth: there is no substitute for good management. Extrinsic rewards have their place, and incentives -- I believe -- can play a powerful role, but only as a supporting player to, not in lieu of, strong management.
Thanks for the link Ann. As you know I develop reward and recognition programs for my clients so I just had to let off a little steam over at the Trusted Advisor site.
I think you nailed it by saying the reward and recognition element is a tool that effective managers can use to drive greater performance. The operative word is "effective." Rewards and recognition are no different than a scalpel. In the right hands it can work miracles... in the wrong hands it can be disastrous. Thanks again for the link.
*******************
AB - Paul, you sum it up well: Rewards and recognition are a tool that can be applied effectively ... or not. I, too, make my living developing reward programs for clients - but I (like you, too, I suspect) have encountered enough organizations trying to use rewards to get them out of the admittedly difficult job of employee management. It simply doesn't work.
Posted by: Paul Hebert | March 22, 2007 at 06:57 AM