Many people I know, including me, simply need to know that the outcome of the work matters. Shipping product that results in zero feedback is a motivation killer. Even a little customer feedback provides an immediate productivity boost whether the feedback is good or bad. Similarly, a back-office project with no visibility or customer connection would be hell.
What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
21–30 of 56 posts
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#22employees working harder/better is just like an engine running more powerful/faster. It is not necessarily translates into business/project success, ie. the question is what this engine attached to, where the car (if it is a car) is being driven to or may be it is just a snowplow moving snow from one place to another and back, until sun shines and snow melts away :)
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#23[deleted]
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#24Neither, I found my answer here a while back: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_...
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#25Neither. Trust. Empowerment. For the really good folks: Just get out of their way (and have good channels of communication so that it's clear they're not utterly going off the rails). Having people continually worry if they're going to be punished will make your org a hopeless mess. Supplying people with free snackies and flexible hours without giving them freedom won't make them work harder, it'll just give them a s…
I was going to say this. People aren't going to work hard for someone else (they'll work enough to get by but that's it). If you empower them they'll be working for themselves, and they'll actually want to do a good job. It reminds me of a blog post by a guy managing a few open source projects. The quality of the pull requests he got were poor, and required a lot of fixing up. He decided to add anyone who gave a pull request as an admin, and suddenly the quality of their code went way up. They weren't working for someone else anymore. They were working for themselves.
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#26This debate has been around for half a century. It's far, far more nuanced than this article suggests. Here's the original formulation of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y But it's not that Theory Y is necessarily "better". It depends on tons of different variables. And there have been plenty more theories after X and Y...
>And there have been plenty more theories after X and Y... Specifically Theory Z - which can probably be summed up as "some combination of both X and Y" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_Z
Which is an instance of the Hegelian Dialectic, which is itself bullshit.
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#27The problem with "feel bad" motivation strategies is that they only really work in the short term. Sure, putting tracking devices on employees increases productivity right then, but after a few months, once the employees have figured out how to game the system (or realize that the data from these devices isn't being scrutinized, because performing that kind of rigorous data analysis is expensive/time consuming), prod…
Or worse, because now they have easy metrics to justify their "work", and if they were invested personally in the company you can bet they aren't now. Now it is an us-vs-them situation where they feel justified by doing the bare minimum as long as they satisfy the tracking methods.
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#28A sense of purpose. Long-term financial stability.
You could think of this in terms of Maslow's hierarchy - those seeking self-actualization should be the most productive. The trick is having both the security and freedom to pursue work with purpose and then finding work with a meaningful purpose that you identify with and are good at.
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#29Neither. Trust. Empowerment. For the really good folks: Just get out of their way (and have good channels of communication so that it's clear they're not utterly going off the rails). Having people continually worry if they're going to be punished will make your org a hopeless mess. Supplying people with free snackies and flexible hours without giving them freedom won't make them work harder, it'll just give them a s…
I was going to say this. People aren't going to work hard for someone else (they'll work enough to get by but that's it). If you empower them they'll be working for themselves, and they'll actually want to do a good job. It reminds me of a blog post by a guy managing a few open source projects. The quality of the pull requests he got were poor, and required a lot of fixing up. He decided to add anyone who gave a pull…
I don't think I would have been brave enough to give admin permissions to authors of disappointing pull requests. Well done.
If you recall who he is, let us know.
Re: What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering?
#30It really depends on the the employee. Some thrive on open-ended projects, some thrive with bite-sized chunks of work with quick feedback. For me, as an employer, I tend to go look at their car. If it's a mess inside, then I tend to lump them in the "needs quick feedback" category.
This tip just made my day, thank you.
Now I'm not even sure I want to clean up my car inside.