Making work more than a wallet filler

By VICKI JAYNE

Christmas closedown over, the musty air of newly rebooted offices is starting to stir.

Holiday victims suffering varying degrees of sun, child or TV exposure are shuffling back to face work they abandoned in the "exuberant irrationalism" of Christmas cheer. The diary opens on a whole new year of ... what?

It seems like a grand time to ponder the topic of motivation. Why do we do it? Work, that is. Is it for money or praise? Satisfaction or stupefaction? For the company (human or corporate), or for self-fulfillment? Or is it just the basic human need to be gainfully occupied?

These are questions that surface with added piquancy in the minds of workers freshly wrenched from sun and surf as they swap shorts for suits and sit in familiar traffic jams.

Okay, so most of us seriously need the dosh to meet mortgages, student loans, Christmas credit card insanities and the odd bout of gleeful gluttony.

But money isn't the be-all and end-all of it. Increasingly, we want our work to come slathered in satisfaction and garnished with meaning. It has to feed something more than the wallet.

Employees' growing need to have meaning in their jobs has been cited by American motivational expert Bob Nelson as one of seven trends that are having an impact on managing in today's business world.

It's part of the high-tech/high-touch syndrome. The more time we spend in front of machines, the greater the need for human inputs - the touchy-feely things.

Today's workers increasingly expect to have "more balance"in their jobs and family life, says Nelson.

It's not just a matter of more time out, or flexible hours.

Demographics indicate that the next generation of employees will "increasingly demand work environments that they find personally more meaningful."

Because these "Generation X" workers are not only more mobile and less loyal but are thinner on the ground now that the baby-boom bulge has peaked, the task of identifying incentives that will keep skilled noses to the company grindstone is a fairly vital one.

Simple positive reinforcement can go a long way. Employees may not need a pay rise as much as they do a personal thanks from their manager for a job well done, suggests Nelson.

While it seems fairly self-evident that people respond well to praise - and there's a heap of examples in management literature to prove the point - finding ways to structure it either formally or informally into work processes isn't necessarily high on management agendas.

A faster work pace often means managers are so busy checking off their own list of business chores that their good "people-first" intentions go out the window.

As to how it's done, Nelson's own published wisdom includes at least 3003 practical suggestions in books entitled 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, 1001 Ways to Energise Employees and 1001 Ways to Take Initiative At Work.

The titles may border on trite, but the ideas look like the result of a mind at play, exploring possibilities, leaping along promising laterals from the practical to the whacky (golden banana awards?), and a lot of ground in between.

Whether they're of specific use or not, they do help to highlight at least one aspect of work that influences motivation - a sense of fun and creativity.

Sure, most jobs have their eternally dreary bits - tape transcription is my scourge - but finding ways to engage people's playfulness may not only lighten up the whole work atmosphere but generate potentially useful ideas.

Innovation is a lot more likely to spring from minds at play than ones that are too tightly harnessed to the job in hand. And innovation in terms of generating new ideas, finding different ways of doing things, creating new products or coming up with fresh ways to deliver services is going to be increasingly vital to business success.

In a recent Institute of Management fax poll, innovation came just behind leadership as a top issue for today's managers.

Interestingly, it is followed by "values," or the increasing importance of ethics in business practice.

It's another area that rates highly on the "meaningfulness" scale.

I suspect that in the coming year, people will not only be hearing more about EQ (Emotional Intelligence) but about "SQ," or what you might term spiritual intelligence. Those on a quest for "meaning" in the workplace will be alert to the fit between personal and business ethics.

So, beyond engaging the minds and hearts of employees, businesses will have to ponder their role in terms of social and community values.

Work motivation functions on different levels. A well-led organisation (and yes, there will be more on this topic) is more likely to be responsive to these and to play to employee needs and strengths.

In a recent lecture series, Nelson condensed some of his ideas into a motivational top 10.

These range from dishing out personal thanks and finding ways to recognise, reward and promote people based on their achievements to things that influence workplace climate.

Sharing more information as to how the company works and how each person fits into the overall scheme, giving him or her a sense of ownership in work, is part of this.

He also suggests that managers "strive to create a work environment that is open, trusting and fun."

Sounds like a good note on which to start a new work year.

* Vicki Jayne can be contacted by e-mail at vjayne@iconz.co.nz or at PO Box 32, Auckland.