“Friday format”: demotivation, or love [for work] cannot be bought for money
In our Friday format we write in 1cloud about the work of programmers. For example, we talked about how corporations and start-ups are trying to attract highly qualified specialists and figured out what salaries programmers in Silicon Valley and not only can expect. But it turns out that high salary, interesting work and a variety of bonuses do not guarantee the loyalty of employees and can even demotivate them.
/ Flickr / perzon seo / CC-BY
This happened , for example, in the division of Google, engaged in the development of unmanned vehicles. Since 2010, the company introduced incentive bonuses for employees who have worked in this area since its inception. In addition to high salaries and shares in the company, they received large cash bonuses of several million dollars.
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This led to the fact that leading employees received so much money that they stopped valuing their work and started developing their own projects. For example, the technical director of a project to develop self-driving cars, Chris Urmson, in 2016, together with the former program manager Tesla Autopilot and Tesla Model X, founded their own startup Aurora.
And this is not an isolated case. At the expense of former Waymo employees (of Google), at least two more startups: Bryan Salesky, Chief Equipment Officer, started developing his own software for self-driving vehicles, Argo AI, and another group of engineers founded the project of unmanned trucks Otto. In February of this year, it even became known that Google sued the new company for patent infringement and theft of trade secrets.
Of course, employees were not required to work for the corporation all their lives. But this case only confirms that large cash bonuses cannot be a long-term motivator for workers. The Institute of Management and Management in 2013 conducted a study that showed that 47.3 billion dollars spent on the payment of cash bonuses in the UK did not increase the level of interest of employees and their motivation.
There are several explanations for this. If an employee receives bonuses often enough, then he begins to perceive them as part of his regular income. Therefore, when payments for some reason will not, it will have a demotivating effect. This also results in a situation where the bonus is issued to all employees, without taking into account the contribution of each individual. You can avoid this, if you think about the system of payment of premiums in advance, tie it to achieve certain goals - this will allow employees to better understand what they and their colleagues get money for.
There is another opinion, confirmed by an experiment on the effect of money on motivation, which was conducted in 1971 by Edward Deci, a psychology professor. He invited students to solve puzzles, while in the first group, students received $ 1 for solving each head, and in the second group, solving puzzles was not paid.
The most interesting thing happened during the breaks when participants in the experiment could choose for themselves what to do: relax, read magazines or continue solving puzzles. It is logical to assume that those who received the money continued to work in order to earn more. But in fact, everything happened quite the opposite - those people who did not receive money for participating in the experiment solved the puzzles in the breaks.
Due to this “external” monetary reward, the participant lost internal motivation - a feeling in which the reward is the activity itself. At the same time, in another experiment , in a group in which positive feedback on work and verbal reinforcement was used as an external reward, the motivation was higher compared to the group that continued to work “for free”. This proves that the desire to work, interest and high performance is not always associated with money.
Intangible ways to motivate employees include, for example, recognition programs . However, methods show great efficiency when colleagues themselves praise each other - the verbal recognition of even small achievements has a serious effect on motivation.
This does not necessarily have to deal with people from the same department or team; expanding the “geography” of such a program within the company leads to the fact that employees are beginning to better understand what their colleagues work and learn about their contribution to the success of the company. All this leads to an increase in team spirit, mutual aid and reduces the number of absenteeism and late arrival.
Another option is a bit more tangible - reward with certificates. The choice of certificates is desirable to personalize, that is, to take into account the passions and desires of a particular employee. Then, in addition to the material component, such a reward can bring positive emotions and motivate.
However, even such a reward system is not as easy to build as it seems. In 2013, Ian Larkin of Harvard Business School conducted a study in which he studied the attendance reward program introduced by the laundry network. Employees who had no absenteeism or delays during the month received a certificate for $ 75 to a local restaurant or store, and for six months of ideal attendance, another additional certificate for $ 100.
As a result, at the beginning of the program, employees preferred not to come to work at all, imitating poor health, if they understood that they were late. Managers hoped that during the program period people would develop the habit of coming on time. But closer to the end of the nine-month company, if the delay still happened and the employee was excluded from the list for bonuses, the situation with delays worsened several times. In addition, the appearance on the workplace on time was not always associated with the amount of work being done.
In addition, there were dissatisfied with the new program. Those who always came on time before the introduction of the reward system or worked hard were very unhappy with the fact that less hardworking people who changed their behavior only after the start of the program received the award. Their productivity fell by 6-8% percent. But in general, laundry performance fell by 1.4%, which cost the company $ 1.5 thousand per month.
Demotivation, reduced efficiency and interest can be associated not only with bonuses, bonuses and any types of rewards. Great influence on the working atmosphere have the heads and managers. Most often, employees are motivated by unreasonable and too strict rules that are established in the company. We have already touched upon the topic of internal politics in this article . People are not very fond of when they are trying to control their every step. This is confirmed even by our example about the control of late arrivals and attendance at the laundry.
The lack of praise and feedback from the authorities or equal treatment of all employees, regardless of their contribution to the common cause, negatively affect their attitude to work. In addition, a lot depends on the personality of the boss, who should be not only responsible, obligatory and do a great job, but also be able to build human relations with employees. Attention and praise from the bosses will allow workers to avoid burnout and increase productivity.
PS What else do we write on the IaaS provider blog 1cloud:
/ Flickr / perzon seo / CC-BYThis happened , for example, in the division of Google, engaged in the development of unmanned vehicles. Since 2010, the company introduced incentive bonuses for employees who have worked in this area since its inception. In addition to high salaries and shares in the company, they received large cash bonuses of several million dollars.
')
This led to the fact that leading employees received so much money that they stopped valuing their work and started developing their own projects. For example, the technical director of a project to develop self-driving cars, Chris Urmson, in 2016, together with the former program manager Tesla Autopilot and Tesla Model X, founded their own startup Aurora.
And this is not an isolated case. At the expense of former Waymo employees (of Google), at least two more startups: Bryan Salesky, Chief Equipment Officer, started developing his own software for self-driving vehicles, Argo AI, and another group of engineers founded the project of unmanned trucks Otto. In February of this year, it even became known that Google sued the new company for patent infringement and theft of trade secrets.
Prize Prize strife
Of course, employees were not required to work for the corporation all their lives. But this case only confirms that large cash bonuses cannot be a long-term motivator for workers. The Institute of Management and Management in 2013 conducted a study that showed that 47.3 billion dollars spent on the payment of cash bonuses in the UK did not increase the level of interest of employees and their motivation.
There are several explanations for this. If an employee receives bonuses often enough, then he begins to perceive them as part of his regular income. Therefore, when payments for some reason will not, it will have a demotivating effect. This also results in a situation where the bonus is issued to all employees, without taking into account the contribution of each individual. You can avoid this, if you think about the system of payment of premiums in advance, tie it to achieve certain goals - this will allow employees to better understand what they and their colleagues get money for.
Money can not buy happiness
There is another opinion, confirmed by an experiment on the effect of money on motivation, which was conducted in 1971 by Edward Deci, a psychology professor. He invited students to solve puzzles, while in the first group, students received $ 1 for solving each head, and in the second group, solving puzzles was not paid.
The most interesting thing happened during the breaks when participants in the experiment could choose for themselves what to do: relax, read magazines or continue solving puzzles. It is logical to assume that those who received the money continued to work in order to earn more. But in fact, everything happened quite the opposite - those people who did not receive money for participating in the experiment solved the puzzles in the breaks.
Due to this “external” monetary reward, the participant lost internal motivation - a feeling in which the reward is the activity itself. At the same time, in another experiment , in a group in which positive feedback on work and verbal reinforcement was used as an external reward, the motivation was higher compared to the group that continued to work “for free”. This proves that the desire to work, interest and high performance is not always associated with money.
Intangible ways to motivate employees include, for example, recognition programs . However, methods show great efficiency when colleagues themselves praise each other - the verbal recognition of even small achievements has a serious effect on motivation.
This does not necessarily have to deal with people from the same department or team; expanding the “geography” of such a program within the company leads to the fact that employees are beginning to better understand what their colleagues work and learn about their contribution to the success of the company. All this leads to an increase in team spirit, mutual aid and reduces the number of absenteeism and late arrival.
Another option is a bit more tangible - reward with certificates. The choice of certificates is desirable to personalize, that is, to take into account the passions and desires of a particular employee. Then, in addition to the material component, such a reward can bring positive emotions and motivate.
However, even such a reward system is not as easy to build as it seems. In 2013, Ian Larkin of Harvard Business School conducted a study in which he studied the attendance reward program introduced by the laundry network. Employees who had no absenteeism or delays during the month received a certificate for $ 75 to a local restaurant or store, and for six months of ideal attendance, another additional certificate for $ 100.
As a result, at the beginning of the program, employees preferred not to come to work at all, imitating poor health, if they understood that they were late. Managers hoped that during the program period people would develop the habit of coming on time. But closer to the end of the nine-month company, if the delay still happened and the employee was excluded from the list for bonuses, the situation with delays worsened several times. In addition, the appearance on the workplace on time was not always associated with the amount of work being done.
In addition, there were dissatisfied with the new program. Those who always came on time before the introduction of the reward system or worked hard were very unhappy with the fact that less hardworking people who changed their behavior only after the start of the program received the award. Their productivity fell by 6-8% percent. But in general, laundry performance fell by 1.4%, which cost the company $ 1.5 thousand per month.
Human factor
Demotivation, reduced efficiency and interest can be associated not only with bonuses, bonuses and any types of rewards. Great influence on the working atmosphere have the heads and managers. Most often, employees are motivated by unreasonable and too strict rules that are established in the company. We have already touched upon the topic of internal politics in this article . People are not very fond of when they are trying to control their every step. This is confirmed even by our example about the control of late arrivals and attendance at the laundry.
The lack of praise and feedback from the authorities or equal treatment of all employees, regardless of their contribution to the common cause, negatively affect their attitude to work. In addition, a lot depends on the personality of the boss, who should be not only responsible, obligatory and do a great job, but also be able to build human relations with employees. Attention and praise from the bosses will allow workers to avoid burnout and increase productivity.
PS What else do we write on the IaaS provider blog 1cloud:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/327534/
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