Management consulting firm Kepner-Tregoe conducted a parallel survey in late 1998 of 749 hourly workers and 541 supervisors at U.S. corporations. While the study focused on issues involving retention, there were lots of management lessons embedded in it.
Retention has become a huge issue for top management in the last year or so. This has gotten the most press in Information Technology, but is probably a problem almost anywhere highly skilled motivated workers are needed -- which is just about everywhere.
The response, according to the K-T study, is that top management has lots of things but not the most important ones. In the groups they polled, more than 2/3s said their top management had made salaries and financial awards more competitive.
- 62% had management that had improved benefit packages.
- 44% had added programs that allowed employees to work at home or telecommute in some way.
- 38% even now have programs that offer certain kinds of personal perks -- such as laundry service, allowing pets at work, and massages.
Still, the supervisors and workers both say that management is doing plenty but the wrong stuff.
- 50% of the supervisors and 56% of the workers say they don't have enough resources, such as equipment, time or human resources to do the jobs they need to do.
- 40% of the supervisors and 59% of the workers said they don't get recognition when they do a job well.
- 47% of the supervisors and 69% of the workers say that compensation is not tied to performance.
WALLY'S COMMENT: Here we go looking for important stuff. We ask if money is a motivator and yet 56% of the respondents to this survey didn't even mention money as one of their top three reasons that high performers are leaving.
Ok, does that mean that money isn't important? Nope. If you're talking about top performers in any area, they're probably already fairly well compensated. The only time that money really gets into the game for them is when it becomes a kind of score card -- being sure that they're making more than other people that they think are their peers in performance.
No, money is important but as a hygiene factor. Folks have to make enough money, but once they're making enough -- whatever that is -- then what's important is quality of life issues.
As a general rule, people want to work in places where they have clear and reasonable expectations and regular and usable feedback on those expectations and their performance. They want people to recognize when they're doing a good job and they want some kind of fairness in terms of the consequences of their performance matching up with their reward structures.
This article originally appeared in Wally Bock's Briefing Memo newsletter in May 1999.
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