Employees are an organisation’s biggest assets. It is important to provide them with encouragement, stimulus, and make them feel that they are an integral part of the company’s mission
All vision statements of organisations refer to their employees as their biggest assets. They use different words to say so but even the most capital intensive organisations make it a point to mention that their human assets are by far their most profitable investments.
Fredrick Herzberg, the American psychologist, developed his two-factor theory of motivation and job satisfaction in 1959. He classified employee experiences at the workplace in terms of hygiene and motivational factors. Hygiene factors referred to the physical space – the office infrastructure, facilities that are made available to employees, convenience of location, salary structure and parity, etc.
Motivational factors refer to performance recognition mechanisms, autonomy, decision-making power, employee safety, relationships with bosses and peers, opportunity to learn and grow, nurturing organisation culture, etc.
Herzberg’s studies threw up one startling factor. If hygiene factors were absent, it demotivated employees; but if hygiene factors were present, they were not enough to motivate employees! In the absence of motivational factors, employees remained listless and dissatisfied at their workplaces.
It is interesting that more than 60 per cent of our waking life is spent at our workplaces and whilst most organisations spend enormous time, effort and money on hygiene factors, motivational factors get the short shrift largely because it is less understood. A number of studies have shown that just increasing salary does not get the best out of the employee. Daniel Pink’s autonomy, mastery and purpose evolved from studies across cultures.
Employee safety and well-being is a very important motivational factor, especially in today’s context when there is a clamor for diversity and inclusivity. Workplaces are no longer men’s exclusive clubs, home of the back-slapping bonhomie, the ribald one-liners, the wink-and-nudge slapstick display, and this attitude of denial: what I don’t know can’t hurt me and therefore I choose not to know! Men may be from Mars and women may be from Venus, but here on earth they have to be treated the same!
I was rather surprised to hear from a reputed media honcho after he shut his company following allegations of sexual misconduct from one of the co-founders, that he does not understand how to run the company or words to that effect! The sub-text seems to be that I am a creative guy and the rigor required to put systems and processes in place to make that creativity work and yield results is not my cup of tea. Fair enough. All of us can’t be all things to all people. But at least there should have been someone else on board in the organisation who was competent and responsible for ensuring safety and well-being of the teams.
As we go forward, I suspect it will not be just women who will need to be made to feel safe but people of various sexual orientations too. We seem to have become increasingly intolerant of anyone who ‘is not like us’. Organisation cultures should evolve not just to pay lip service to inclusivity but to ensure that it is a level playing field, and no discrimination happens just because someone doesn’t conform to our notion of what is normalcy. Organisations have to articulate a strict zero tolerance policy and put in penal strictures in place that will be such strong deterrents that no one will dare indulge in deviant behaviour.
It is equally important to ensure that a fool-proof process is put in place by the organisation to ensure that facts are established and no one is vilified unnecessarily. In such situations, most organisations hand over the matter to the police and wash their hands off; the employees are suddenly rudderless and thrown into the harsh glare of the media and it takes not just gumption but rhino skin to deal with all the muck that is strewn around. It is no surprise therefore that many such deviant behaviour goes unreported and the person at the receiving end has to develop his/her own defense mechanisms to deal with it in silence, and move on.
It is a good thing there is no statute of limitations in bringing sexual abuse or misdemeanor of any kind, out in the open, even after decades. Organisations have to create a whole habitat to make reporting possible and set up structures that roll out the right action thereon. Yes, employees are the organisation’s biggest assets. But not just in the sense that they contribute to the bottom-line.
To my mind, an employee not taken care of can dent the brand in such a way that no amount of image management can help the organisation recover from it. It can make the difference between building a lasting organisation and a sudden, painful death
