It seems that as Alberta has largely pulled out of the recession, provincially creating more jobs in June than the entirety of our neighbours to the south, the HR practitioner is soon going to be faced with the ‘2008’ problem all over again. How do we attract quality employees, and how do we retain and motivate the ones we already have? This is the first post of a series that will look at rewards and incentives with regards to improving employee performance in creating vibrant and meaningful workplaces.
Competitive compensation packages are definitely one way. However, the traditional perspective that if you pay people enough they will stay with your organization and perform well is dying as significant evidence points towards other more important factors leading to attracting, motivating and retaining talent. I was graciously given the book “Punished By Rewards: the Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise and other Bribes” by a co-worker and mentor. Written by Alfie Kohn, it challenges the Behavioural Science conclusion that people react favorably and predictably to rewards, incentives and praise. It was originally published in 1993, so it is by no means new thought on the subject, and summarizes previous sociological experiments to support its hypothesis. As I work through this book, I plan on sharing some of its insights and learnings that I find to be beneficial to me as an HR practitioner. I am 5 chapters in so far, and will summarize the first portion of the book in the days to come. I am embarking on this ongoing book-report with a limited idea of what approach this book will take, I hope the journey is a productive one.
But as an introduction to this field of thought, I thought I would share a video that I imagine many of you are familiar with: By Dan Pink, RSA Animates: the surprising truth about what motivates us provides a good overview of the general concepts addressed in Alfie Kohn’s book.
Click Here to Watch–> RSA Animate: Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us
Tyler also wrote a blog entry in January that dealt with this topic, and provided background info on Herberg’s motivator-hygiene theory as well as David Rock’s neuroleadership based leadership/coaching approach.
I hope you share my interest in learning how to better motivate people, and please feel free to provide any feedback or stories that you feel are relevant!
Voice Construction
And for those of you interested, I did pass my NKE exam (thanks for the tips on my earlier blog posts) and I am now debating writing the NPPA this fall!