When it comes to employee engagement, money matters. But if my instincts are right, genuine and timely appreciation, flexibility, and a positive culture motivate staff far more than financial rewards alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s a recipe for retention. We all know that staff turnover costs; both in cash and in productivity, so it makes sense to be alive to the factors that drive an enduring commitment to the enterprise, right? But how many professional service firms and businesses have a considered or even documented strategy to drive organizational employee engagement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It could just be the unique bunch of personalities that I have had the privilege to work with, but they are a group who have stuck together \u2013 most of them having worked in the same team for over a decade. So, I decided to ask them a few questions in a short survey. They were asked to use a scale of 1 \u2013 10. A score of 10 means that they agree with the proposition in the strongest possible terms. On the other hand, a 1 means that they disagree with the proposition in the strongest possible terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Questions<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No prizes for guessing the answer to the first question. Overwhelmingly, the team strongly agreed with the first question. Flexibility in work arrangements is way more important than a few extra dollars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly, the group strongly agreed with the third question \u2013 that they would happily earn a little less if it meant job satisfaction and living a culture that suits their values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the answer to the second question had a wide range of responses – some strongly disagreed while others strongly agreed, – while there were a range of positions in between. Which perhaps underscores the need for managers to design reward systems that take in to account the personality and priorities of the individual staff member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I drew comfort from the conclusions of some Harvard academics (Thibault-Landry, Schweyer and Whillans) in a recent research piece Winning the War for Talent:Modern Motivation Methods for Attracting and Retaining Employees<\/a><\/em>. The authors opined:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In today\u2019s workforce, rewards\u2014including cash and non-cash rewards\u2014 are ubiquitous and necessary. However, unless rewards are selected and presented in a meaningful way, and are designed to convey recognition and appreciation, rewards are not sufficient to motivate employees who increasingly seek autonomy, mastery <\/em> To me, it begs the question, if employee engagement is driven by such a myriad of tangible and intangible factors, should organisations not be developing a detailed strategy to manage the risk of inadvertently driving a culture of underperformance due to a reward system which unduly focuses on financial decoration?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When it comes to employee engagement, money matters. But if my instincts are right, genuine and timely appreciation, flexibility, and a positive culture motivate staff far more than financial rewards alone. And it\u2019s a recipe for retention. We all know that staff turnover costs; both in cash and in productivity, so it makes sense to…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1876,"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions\/1876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisschultz.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}