Motivation

While home, we frequently heard ads on the radio for a Motivation show. At first, we thought that the ads were a joke because the radio station does this sometimes. Well, that and the ads were so ridiculous. I looked up the show online and the information seems to be for businesses that want to motivate their employees through incentives and rewards.

As I've blogged about before, everyone needs intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in their work. This show seems to focus on the tangible extrinsic rewards. It doesn't appear to address any non-monetary related rewards. In my experience, it isn't monetary (or travel) incentives that increase motivation. It is about how a company treats its employees.

If management decides to change someone's job without asking them or telling them until they show up to work one day, motivation/morale is going to be low. If management keeps changing your workload every couple months because clients are complaining that they haven't had the service in the contract that they signed with your company, morale is going to be low. If you work really hard and complete a project on an unreasonable deadline that saves the company a lot of money and you don't get a personal thank you from any management, you aren't going to be very motivated to do a good job. If you lose your desk to a new hire when you have been in the company a few years, you aren't going to have high morale. If you have to share voice mail with other people when clients are supposed to be able to leave confidential information for you, morale will suffer. If management decides to move people's offices around and you get moved into an office so cramped that you can't move your chair without bumping someone while another department has twice the space and half the people, you probably aren't going to be that motivated. If your boss schedules you for a two hour meeting on a Friday (repeatedly), you aren't going to be that happy. If you boss tells a coworker that she can leave a couple hours early one day and make up the time later and 10 minutes later tells you that she doesn't have the authority to let you go an hour early to make a flight, you aren't going to be very motivated. If your boss tells you that she doesn't want to be a supervisor anymore (or never wanted to be one), your motivation may go down. If you repeatedly go to "cheer leading sessions" where upper management tells you everything is great while the company's going bankrupt or being bought out, your motivation isn't going to be high. When you spend a couple hours to have a meeting to prepare for another meeting where the same things will be discussed and nothing decided, employees may get a bit frustrated or apathetic. If your coworkers refuse to share materials or help you with clients even though you help them out and they use your materials regularly, your morale may go down.

Now, I'd like to see a conference that actually address some of the reasons for employee apathy...

(Note, this list is a compilation of many people's jobs.)