Pay and benefits generally get your workforce in the door but after that their effect on daily motivation and morale drops off sharply. The right job assignment, however, can make a world of difference every single day. Sometimes deciding what job to assign to which person can be a tough decision. People will try to help by telling you what they like to do and what they’re good at doing. My experience has taught me that most people aren’t all that in touch with reality.
Let me expand on that thought for a minute with a simple example. One of your sales clerks tells you she likes gift wrapping the best and that she’s really good at it. Truth is she really isn’t all that good at it. She may simply be afraid of the cash register and is eager to avoid using it. We all have things that seem quite simple shake us up and give us a phobia. If she’s actually good at sales and not so good at gift wrapping you have two choices. Find out why she doesn’t like working the floor so you can address the issue or train her better at gift wrapping. Because we want our team members to like their job, making the best decision can be difficult. We want to assign them the job that will provide them the greatest sense of satisfaction and enjoyment. We should consider what our team members tell us but ultimately the decision is ours and the reason “we get paid the big bucks.”
Mommy, mommy look what I can do!
A real morale booster is allowing people to do what they enjoy doing. The impression is that people don’t enjoy work and therefore we have to make them do what they don’t enjoy. Our experience has taught us again and again that people would “rather be fishing.” Here’s what I’ve learned: people enjoy doing what they’re good at doing, they take pride in it, and they get a tremendous amount of satisfaction in doing it. They may complain all day about having to do a particular task but, if they think they’re good at it, see how loud they yell when you take that job away from them or criticize their work. There are always some who like certain jobs strictly because they find them easier or less tedious...ignore them for now.
Boosting morale through work.
Assuming I’m right, that people like doing what they’re good at, let’s use this information to improve morale and stimulate motivation. It’s actually a three pronged approach which helps you apply it to all assignments and not just the glamorous or popular ones. The three considerations are assignments, training, and tools. These are all necessary parts because the odds are you have overlap in what people are good at doing and underlap in skills to cover all the duties assigned to your team.
the job assignment
The first prong is to assign people to tasks/jobs/functions based on their strengths. The sports team analogy is probably the easiest but least applicable in the subtleties of many workplace assignments but I can’t help myself. In football, my favorite team sport, you may have a guy that’s big and fast but can’t catch a football. Do you assign him at tight end or make him a pulling guard? Does he respond well to training so he could learn to catch or is he more prone to enjoy throwing a block? What are your team needs? Is your team weakness at the defensive tackle position? You’re in charge, you’ve got to make the decision. Oh, by the way, he wants to play quarterback.
Many supervisors make the mistake, or try to take the easy road, and let people choose the job they want. That has three pitfalls: they may not be good at it and the company suffers, they will blame themselves if they fail to actually enjoy it, and individuals who didn’t get the assignment they wanted will blame their teammates. Take the responsibility and don’t pass it off to the team. Input is fine but shoulder the responsibility of the final decision in such a way so blow back stops at your desk.
A popular belief is one of universal training which allows the boss to avoid responsibility for actual assignments. The rationalization for job rotation is that everyone stays current/qualified in all the job functions. I’m not a fan and have found, in most of the cases I’ve encountered, it was counterproductive. Skill sets were kept at a lower level across the board and the stress of constantly relearning skills made people grumpy. For the circumstances I’ve been involved in, the occasional reassignment to cover for a vacation was refresher enough for most.
In many cases, personal qualities rather than skill sets will determine assignments. One easy example is the unit trainer. The most skilled or highest producer doesn’t necessarily have the patience and/or directive skills to be the most efficient trainer. A big part of leadership is learning how to identify the strengths and skills of your team members and then to match those strengths and skills with the proper job assignment. I realize that many job centers have what appears to be one type of job, like a call center, but a more careful look will show several variations and small additional duties that make this point relevant.
Let me interject here with a potentially helpful reference to a previous post, My Horse Barn Analogy. Often you have a cow pony or two on staff. They generally get the least favorite jobs because they’re good at doing good work regardless of the assignment. Be careful you don’t abuse them because they’re your real bread and butter. If you constantly reward their hard work with yet another crappy job, you can burn them out.
proper training
Lack of training is huge stressor in the workplace. Having a plan for training is the first big step in setting up your training program. Organizing and implementing are the others. The two biggest areas where training is lost during implementation is the poor/unprepared trainer, lack of written procedures, and the failure to set aside adequate time. In today’s business climate, people are hired to fill a particular duty assignment. My preference, however, is to fill at the bottom and elevate through attrition. With the appropriate mix of formal schooling, on-the-job training, and experience, you can prepare your own worker bee replacements. In any case, proper training helps a person become skilled at what they do allowing them to get enjoyment out of doing it. Real training boosts morale by removing the stress of trying to do something without feeling competent.
Too many managers and business owners put the onus on the new employee to learn the job. The employee will do the best they can and you hardly have to lift a finger. That’s not the point. I have met so many people who hate their job. The hatred started out as the extreme stress of being “thrown in the deep end and forced to learn how to swim” (I actually had a manager tell me this was his way of training and I was the trainee at the time). Even if you manage to somehow “train” your employees with this method, you may not teach them anything (except that you’re a total jerk). In any case, they will always feel insecure about their performance because they have no measure of what’s the proper way. The stress and insecurity make them hate their job.
...training the trainer
Pick the right person to conduct the training. Make sure they have all the proper skill sets to include the appropriate attitude and disposition. Once you’ve made the choice of trainer, make sure they are trained in the techniques involved in training. It’s not as simple as showing someone the ropes and it requires some schooling to know how to train someone efficiently.
...spell it out
Written procedures are a must. As I stated in the post Are You a Leader?, you must be able to give direction. Spread the wealth around and have various team members write down how they perform a task. Put each into a standardized format and have a different team member follow the procedure to perform the task. Scrub them until you have a complete and accurate procedure for each task. The trainer should then train to competency on each procedure as written. Unless you’re going to issue everyone a tablet to carry around, the procedures need to be printed for easy and mobile reference.
...time and opportunity
Setting aside time is probably the toughest bullet for most managers to bite. Personnel budgets are generally pretty tight and the position to be filled is probably already vacant so that chunk of work isn’t getting done. Filling positions by promoting from within helps to speed up the process in some regards because the scope of training usually narrows but you have to replace the promoted employee which adds some training back into the pile. No matter how the position is filled you need to have a plan in place that allows the proper amount of time to train as well as the right opportunities. Not all tasks necessarily come up during the training period and allowances must be made to cover those tasks as well.
the necessary tools
Assigning the right person to the right job with the right training will get you most of the way to providing the proper conditions for your team to enjoy their work. There is another step and that’s to furnish all the necessary tools. It is extremely frustrating to have a job to do but not have the proper tools to complete the task. Whether it’s a software program, a specialized wrench, or an isolated work environment that’s needed, you must provide. It’s easy to say that the budget won’t accommodate or the current tools are sufficient. Also, your team may not express how desperate they are for these tools. It doesn’t alter the fact that these items affect morale.
Not the best example.
I want to tie this all together with a bit of a lesson tossed in. When I started managing projects for a facilities department, they had no project management software. The IT department did but not me. I requested MS Project software and was told I could have it (Facilities manager didn’t like it but acquiesced). I remember jumping through a few hoops to get it but the software was finally loaded onto my PC. Within a short period of time I realized I needed some training to really use it effectively. Again, I requested the training and was sent to a two day course on the basics. Being a tad retentive by nature and pretty good at organizing and scheduling, the job was right down my alley. My overall learning curve was pretty steep but I am a quick learner and self motivated so everything came together pretty quickly. My morale was good. As time wore on, I got better at it and my morale improved even more. I enjoyed my work.
So there you go, I had a job assignment I was good at, sufficient training to keep from getting too frustrated, and the tools to do my job. Life should be rosey. The problem arose from the fact that the boss wouldn’t recognize any project plans written on MS Project. Timelines written out by the software weren’t allowed to be shared because the customer might expect it to be followed and get upset if it wasn’t. The demands for information from the boss, the facilities manager, consisted of arbitrary lists and disorganized vendor work schedules. This didn’t line up with my methodical approach. Also, cost constraints and deadlines seemed to fall randomly, seemingly driven by the favored, or unfavored, status of the particular customer at the moment. Change orders would fall out of the sky based on the whim of my boss upsetting my customer and the vendors performing the work. The frustration grew to the point of demoralization.
The point of my story is...once you provide the job, training, and tools, you have to leave your worker to do the job. The goal of providing your team with all the right stuff, to perform their job to the point of enjoyment, has to be for the independent exercise of those acquired talents. Not allowing them to use their talents has the reverse effect, it ruins morale.
Buying the team pizza on Friday should be a reward and not an effort to boost morale. Give them what they need to enjoy earning that reward and morale will rise on its own.
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