TRIGGER HAPPY

A large proportion of Britain’s workforce does not feel properly motivated, ac-cording to research conducted by Capital Incentives. This is hardly shocking news. What is surprising is how passively we accept the situation and how easily it could be rectified.

The company has uncovered some of the reasons for such apathy and, sadly, job insecurity is one of the biggest factors that affects motivation.

Only 42 per cent of the work force feels secure in their employment. Of the other major influences – salary, prospects and the stress caused by time pressures – are all cited by nearly 30 per cent of respondents as reasons for low motivation.

The other key factor in the equation is recognition; only 40 per cent claimed to be properly recognised for their efforts and only half feel fairly treated or valued.

“What is significant about these findings,” says Capital Incentives managing director Allan Brown, “is that managers cannot do much about the lack of job security, poor pay and prospects and time-pressures in today’s competitive economic environment.

“But where they should have a real influence, like recognising good work and ensuring fair treatment, they don’t seem to be doing much. Only 40 per cent said they are motivated by good relationships with their bosses,” he adds.

The problem seems to be that most companies are simply not aware of these issues, and when they are there is often little understanding of how to repair the damage.

The traditional approach to mot-ivation is to throw money at it – as long as you get back what you put in. If you want higher sales, introduce commission; if you want better performance, offer performance-related pay.

But during the past decade there have been numerous studies suggesting that cash incentives offer only limited value as either a motivator or a remedy for low morale.

A study at the University of Rochester suggested that there was no correlation between performance-related pay and company performance and actually found that “executives tend to be overpaid for bad performance and underpaid for good performance” – a sentiment that Yorkshire Water consumers would no doubt endorse.

In 1993, an Institute of Manpower study in the UK also found that performance-related pay by itself not only failed to improve staff performance but actually led to a downward spiral of demotivation if customer demand was poor.

So if cash is not the answer, what is the key to staff motivation? Brown believes employers must strike the right balance between reward and recognition. “One doesn’t work without the other. Rewards alone lack sincerity, and recognition alone is valuable but can be seen by employees as an underhand method of not giving additional salary or bonuses.

“The problem is that there is no magic formula for every situation. Every company is different. Each has its own culture, philosophy, objectives and problems. Our task is to look at the factors that influence how employees are motivated and recommend an appropriate solution.

Page & Moy Marketing says it has found that even when there is a culture of recognition within a company, it is rare that it permeates throughout it.

Page & Moy Marketing managing director John Fisher says: “In our research, more than two-thirds of respondents said they never motivated non-sales staff. And it seems this is particularly true in the retail and packaged goods sectors – both people-intensive industries where you would think it made sense to get the most out of their main asset.”

But there are exceptions. Car window replacement company Autoglass planned a performance improvement programme for its workforce of 2,000.

After analysis of job types and historical performance, each job task was evaluated to identify specific areas of performance improvement – customer perception of service; distribution errors; clerical errors; and repairs achieved.

A historical standard was set for each task, improvements were measured and retail vouchers were offered for individual performance against the criteria. According to Fisher, clerical errors fell from 20 per cent to five per cent and customer complaints dropped by more than a third.

“The programme enabled Autoglass to move from a customer reactive organisation to a customer- service organisation with a sign ificant improvement in consumer perception of the company,” says Fisher.

In this case the results were measured and rewarded on an individual basis but there is an increasing trend to reward on a collective basis.

Philippe Gayton, general manager of incentives at Argos Business Solutions, the motivation arm of the high street chain, cites as an example Norwegian oil drilling contractor Smedvig, which wanted to motivate its riggers to maintain the highest possible safety standards.

“We produced a programme of collective responsibility in which participants qualified for rewards only if the entire team had performed to the required level. It meant that each rigger felt a responsibility to colleagues to ensure that his individual effort was high, but also each of the workers was paying extra attention to ensure that their colleagues weren’t making mistakes,” he says.

Incentivising safe practice also resulted in a significant fall in accidents and down-time – improving productivity. As a result, Gayton believes health and safety will be a growing market for the incentive industry.

One of the major problems facing companies which want to implement motivation campaigns is the vast array of reward schemes available – from vouchers to catalogues to travel options and even Capital Incentives’ own Visa card, which is like a normal credit card but is charged up with cash when participants achieve their targets.

Also on the increase is the number of specialist stores that have realised the potential of the incentive market. Aquascutum, for example, has recently set up its own Corporate Gifts Collection distributed through the Phoenix Luxury Company.

According to Aquascutum spokesman Kevin Baker, organisations are attracted to these incentives because of the brand name. “High-quality lifestyle gifts can provide a very attractive proposition for staff and they are actually far more cost effective than, say, travel incentives,” says Baker.

The size of the market is reflected in the fact that the company has gone beyond the production of a catalogue and added a complete motivational consultancy.

But the specialist motivation houses are not impressed with the Aquascutum genre of motivation, saying it does not provide the flexibility to offer anything but gifts from a single source.

“Apart from offering consultancy and administration, we can offer the complete spectrum of rewards,” says Nigel Cover, marketing director of the Grass Roots Group. “You really have to provide a range of rewards because no one has the right to tell someone what it is that they want.”

But whatever the particular brand of incentive on offer, the key point is recognising what is causing demotivation in the first place.

If staff morale is low, a poorly run incentive scheme could easily backfire. If the root problems are addressed and realistic targets are rewarded, a motivational scheme can achieve impressive results. But staff will be motivated only by what they want, and not by what the manager thinks they ought to want.