Management used to call their people human resources (HR), but some individuals may find this humiliating. Employees are people, those actively participate in the social life of organization and wider environment, and thinking about them as materials will demotivate them. Can we say «customer resources» or «consumer resources» thinking of customers as bags of money? Some call employees a «pool of talent». That’s much better, however why pool? It may negatively highlight lack of structural alignment of «talent» within organization unconsciously scaring potential employees, investors and customers away. In addition, it is hard to believe that organization is having talents only (however it may reveal the way how organization defines the term talent).

Is it good to be too official – telling your people «dear human resource» or «dear employee» on the letter of congratulation or recognition? Do people feel pleased to be like small screws in the big machine and will read the text following «dear employee»?

This is not about how do we label our people, this is more about how do we treat them. We can treat them in humiliating and condescending way, but can think of and treat them in friendly and respectful way. Let HR manager tell senior manager about human resources as a pool of talented individuals, but god forbids line manager referring his team as the pool or resource.

People are got employed to generate value for everyone, including themselves, and these values do not necessarily expressed in monetary terms. And as more a colleague values non-monetary rewards he or she gets through the work, the more he or she is able to contribute to team-working, relationship building and knowledge transfer. And this phenomenon can be seen everywhere – in sales environment, where people are used to be of macho culture, and in customer support, where they used to be of process culture (as per classification of Deal and Kennedy, 1982).

Employee who works only for bonus may be seen as adding less value to the organization’s long-term capabilities and competency building than employee who does also enjoy the work. Working for valuable rewards (like bonus) brings an element of competition: this is very good for the business until this competition crosses implicit threshold when people stop cooperating, stop sharing their knowledge and experience considering them as «personal competitive advantage» in relation to colleagues. For sales people this threshold can be higher than for support people – simply because by default sales culture assumes working in competitive environment (with other sales people or sales people from other organizations).

These considerations give us an idea that organizations should be careful designing rewarding system within low-competitive environments like customer support, when reward may not be calculated as a percentage of revenue generated. Customer support people may live different values, or at least have different prioritization, and be sensitive to perceived truth and fairness. Variable pay in this environment could be a good stick to control employee performance and satisfaction, however managers should be aware about cultural implications not crossing this «co-operation to competition» threshold – absolute one as well as «relative» (colleague versus colleague).

All this is very interesting, but what’s about practice? Fixed bonuses are not a good way because they do not motivate in long-run, but rather considered as «hygienic factor» (Herzberg et al., 1959; see also presentation by Vikas Singh); variable bonuses or pay are also not a good because you may upset more people in the team than motivate one or two, thus decrease cumulative value of motivation in the team.

In the process cultures you may distinguish a person only if remaining team members agree and support the decision. This can be achieved by different means – by your selection and negotiation with the team, or by letting team select its champions. The main idea of this process is ensuring that team’s beliefs are «we have champions» but at the same time «this is our joint success».

What I am talking about here are two types of motivation, extrinsic - caused by external drivers (like bonus), and intrinsic - caused by internal drivers of the individual. Although we may be limited in applicatioin of extrinsic rewards in the team environment (as well as limited by budgets available), we are free to manage intrinsic states of individuals and team in whole.

Which tools and techniques are available for us to do this uneasy task? One of well-known is Hackman and Oldham's job design (1980), which can be very well related to our classification per the Deal and Kennedy's model.

In the environment of process culture, feedback rate is one of major drivers of individual learning. To boost learning, manager and peers can create conditions to raise rate of feedback, by gathering for informal meetings, getting coach or mentor. There's also another dimension in H&O's model matching D&K's - perceived risk / task significance. When employee understands environment s/he and the team is operating in, s/he can assess the risk and significance of the task being carried out at the individual, team, and even business unit level. These sessions on the organizational strategy and business assessments can also be carried out by the manager at the official regular individual performance appraisal events, but also at the inoffical team meetings and events.

Another highly important value or aspect of work life - autonomy and responsibility – task-related and social. Manager can focus on development of subordinates' skills in adjacent business areas, addressing skill variety job dimension. If team had selected its champion then manager can increase his/her responsibilities (in management science process is called job enlargement) and/or delegate some extent of the authority (job enrichment). Increasing social responsibilities may be in the way of involving champion into peer coaching process (social enlargement), or giving him or her access to «higher powers» setting up mentoring link between senior manager and a champion (social enrichment).

Some managers may consider these proposals as attempts to infringe their powers... but if they think of themselves as a good leaders their subordinates will not even think about intriguing against. Remember - understanding, knowing and positioning yourself is critical in the team environment.

There’s one very important constraint. To play with team and individual motivation you, as a manager, should understand and know yourself, your subordinates, pattern of relationships in the team well. Peer power and influence in the team should be balanced to ensure that there’re no exclusive accumulators, and there’re no withdrawers. You also should ensure that your powers and influential positioning is clearly defined for the team from the beginning, you start your operation as manager with trust and respect, and seen as a friend and opportunity creator rather than limiter and inspector.

Post of Nov 20, 2007