A shifting economic landscape rife with challenges continues to reshape the world of work. McKinsey’s February 2021 Report, The Future of Work After COVID-19, assesses the lasting impact of the pandemic on labor demand, the mix of occupations, and workforce skills required in eight countries: China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It predicts that more than 100 million people, or 1 in 16, will need to find a different occupation by 2030.
The most apparent change has been the increasing number of companies adopting remote working arrangements to varying degrees. Bloomberg’s article on the US-based study expects work-from-home will lift productivity by 5%. The World Economic Forum referred to Microsoft’s Report, the Company’s Annual Work Trend Index, where it surveyed 30,000 people in 31 countries, highlighting seven main trends, some of which are: Flexible work is not going anywhere, high productivity is masking a high level of exhaustion, and shrinking networks are endangering innovation. Microsoft suggests hybrid arrangements.
In the BBC’s Article, Coronavirus: How The World Of Work May Change Forever, Robin Dunbar: Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, says that this is reminiscent of 20 years ago, but remote work arrangements could not be sustained on account of the importance of face-to-face engagement within workgroups and the support and social system that the office environment provides. Professor Dunbar continued that there has been a loneliness epidemic for most of the last two decades.
The Loneliness Pandemic, Harvard Magazine’s Article reported that in 2017 former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy ’97 called loneliness a public-health “epidemic.” The UK’s “minister for loneliness” was appointed in 2018 as the world’s first loneliness minister. “In the US, people are so lonely; they’re renting friends or paying to be cuddled.” – Noreena Hertz.
According to the World Health Organization, two hundred sixty-four million people suffered from depression worldwide in 2020, which is the leading cause of disability globally. A study by Everen Erzen and Özkan Çikrikci, The Effect Of Loneliness On Depression: A Meta-Analysis, involving a sample group of 40,068 individuals, found that loneliness may be a significant variable affecting depression.
Although this piece is not about remote working or loneliness, motivation and the question “how do we get more out of people?” have been on our minds for decades. One, therefore, cannot ignore the value of connectedness in our lives when discussing productive work. James Robertson, who used to walk 21 miles each way to his job in Detroit, said about his work: “It’s fun, and my co-workers were like my second family.”
Productive work is essential to an individual’s self-knowledge and self-esteem; people are not mentally or emotionally designed to live in isolation. We get to resolve the complicated mystery that is us through an infinite number of exchanges with others. “Your unconscious, that inner extrovert, wants you to reach outward and connect. It wants you to achieve communion with work, friends, family, nation, and cause. Your unconscious wants to entangle you in the thick web of relations that are the essence of human flourishing.” – David Brooks, the Social Animal.
But to view this from a different standpoint, are organizational support systems and coping skills up to the task? Consider the number of organizations that changed the titles of their HR Managers many years ago to Business Partners but to an employee or customers; everything remained the same. Dave Ulrich’s model has existed for over 20 years, but the transformation has been slow. The same applies to HR and Predictive Analytics, whose integration into organizational systems to inform better decision-making has been at a snail’s pace. Or the slow progress in the integration of technology in the classroom? School closures affected an estimated 110 million children and young people and significantly impacted working women in the MENA region.
How To Get More Out of People?
“If there was a single question that obsessed 20th-century managers, it was this: How do we get more out of our people? At one level, this question is innocuous —who can object to the goal of raising human productivity? Yet it’s also loaded with industrial-age thinking: How do we (meaning “management”) get more (meaning units of production per hour) out of our people (meaning the individuals who are obliged to follow our orders)?” – Gary Hamel, The Future of Management. One of the common answers is motivation, engagement, and rewards, through which organizations feel they have a certain level of impact or control over the levers of people’s performance.
In the past, individuals often found contentment in jobs that provided a steady income. Today, however, there’s a growing aspiration for fulfillment in areas where we invest significant time and effort. Our contemporary worldview has fundamentally shifted the ‘currency’ we expect in return for our endeavors. This currency varies among individuals; a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer applicable.
What the world demands of us has also changed. Our most significant marketable assets, determining our employability, are the currency and relevance of our knowledge, skills, and creativity. Much of our struggle involves remaining relevant in areas where automatized actions don’t take us very far. With limited opportunities and abundant competition, revealing that we are struggling and need support may feel like surrendering our competitive edge—particularly since long-term job security often seems to have remained in our younger days.
Motivation, Engagement, and Rewards
Individuals typically enter into a new role with a strong desire to perform well. They need to feel they made the right decision as much as the organization does. “One of the hallmarks of a man of self-esteem is the profound pleasure he experiences in the productive work of his mind. His enjoyment of life is fed by his unceasing concern to grow in knowledge and ability.” Dr. Nathaniel Branden.
It’s important not to drop the burning coal of intrinsic motivation into ice-cold water, which could lead to presenteeism, a term coined by Chester Elton. Presenteeism is when individuals show up every day but aren’t really there. “Human beings are uniquely capable of regulating their involvement and commitment to a given task or endeavor…The extent to which we do or don’t fully contribute is governed more by attitude than by necessity, fear or economic influence”— The New HR Analytics.
The figure below shows the steps from engagement to departure.
Since Motivation Theory is not the centerpiece here, I will limit myself to what I have referred to for measurable outcomes. Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory and its scope of implementation, highlighted in The New HR Analytics, provides a practical tool for measuring 15 global factors or drivers of engagement developed by Scarlett Surveys. It’s important to note that it would be necessary to neutralize disengagement factors before an organization attempts to improve engagement factors. As for baseline rewards: “If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance…The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.” Daniel H. Pink, Drive. You can refer to the 15 engagement drivers in the post titled, What is Employee Engagement? 2016.
The Hay Group’s (now Korn Ferry) Total Reward for Engaged Performance Framework below is a reference for organizations that wish to establish a Total Rewards Strategy to articulate how they will use tangible and intangible rewards to provide a compelling total package. The Manager’s Guide to Rewards, Doug Jensen, Tom McMullen, Mel Stark, Hay Group.
Attribution of Value
Today, looking from outside the HR profession, I realize we sometimes overlook how differently people attribute value to things. For example, the level of challenge in a work assignment may be highly significant to one person but less so to another. Similarly, while one individual might prioritize a prestigious job title, another might focus primarily on financial rewards—illustrated humorously by a former senior VP colleague who used to remark, “You can call me an office clerk; just tell me how much money you’re putting in my pocket.” Organizations often recognize these differences regarding tangible rewards, as demonstrated by the increasing personalization of benefits packages and the rationale behind cafeteria plans. You may be interested in reading SHRM’s article titled: You may be interested in reading SHRM’s article titled: Perk Up: 6 Benefits Trends to Watch in 2020 for benefits trends.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs tells us that social needs emerge when physiological and safety needs are satisfied. It would make sense if humans acted rationally all the time.
In January 2002, I started a job with a global manufacturer. The pay was better than what I had earned in the previous two years, and the managing director I would report to had seemed very pleasant during the interview. My role involved taking over secretarial duties from someone moving into an HR position. I was genuinely excited.
On my first day, however, the person handing over the role asked me to wait while she finished a few tasks. I waited for about 45 minutes, sitting at an empty desk facing a wall. Suddenly, without a clear reason, I took my bag and left. At the time, I had no other job options and only 20 AED in my pocket. I had no idea how I would pay my rent or utilities. Asking my family for money wasn’t an option because I wanted to prove that I could support myself. Even today, I can’t fully explain why I left, it certainly wasn’t based on logic. Ten minutes later, she called, apologized, and asked me to return. I told her I didn’t feel the job was right for me.
Less than a month later, I began working with Dubai Ports, Customs and Free Zone Authority (which later became DP World). This role redefined my professional outlook and instilled in me a strong work ethic. Until then, work had felt like drudgery—I was a clock-watcher who harbored ambition but never truly believed I could achieve it.
Fast forward to 2011, when I was interviewing candidates to replace me as Regional HR Manager. One candidate, a young woman, looked familiar. Reviewing her employment history confirmed my suspicion, she was the person I was supposed to replace many years earlier. When I reminded her of our first encounter, she was stunned and immediately apologized again. I quickly reassured her, “Please, don’t apologize. On the contrary, I should be thanking you.”
In his book Drive, Daniel H. Pink writes about the findings of some researchers like Teresa Amabile, who found that the type of work that involves solving novel problems or creating something new is significantly driven or motivated intrinsically – “Harlow’s third drive.” Harry F. Harlow‘s, two-week experiment on learning using eight rhesus monkeys presented a novel theory in 1949, which led him to a third drive that powered behavior other than the biological or reward and punishment; it was the performance of the task itself. Daniel H. Pink also highlights an approach to motivation that focuses on autonomy, mastery, and purpose (the desire to be of service to others). Tony Robbins says there are 6 Human Needs that drive us:
- Certainty 2. Variety 3. Significance 4. Connection/Love 5. Growth 6. Contribution.
Yet, amidst all this discussion, I feel there’s an essential aspect of who we are and how we see ourselves that remains unaddressed: our values. Our values are integral to our self-image, significantly influencing why we do what we do, as well as what we love, accept, and consider essential for our happiness. They serve as filters and guides in our decision-making processes.
We’ve all encountered individuals who, irrespective of the organization they work for, the environment they’re in, or the people around them, consistently embody principles like these:
· “I offer my best effort, skills, and knowledge in every situation regardless of the working environment.”
· “I am supportive, and it makes me happy. I don’t care if anybody notices.”
· “I will never compromise the quality of my work, even if the organization expects much less from me or treats me poorly.”
Individuals guided by such values often go unnoticed because they do not compete for attention or recognition. They don’t highlight their achievements in resolving complex problems or producing exceptional results, nor do they condition their efforts on receiving greater rewards. They simply cannot imagine interacting with their environment or others in any other way.
Are Motivation, Engagement and Rewards Enough?
Change in the world around us for a long time has been happening faster than we can process, persistently pushing against the limits of our flexibility and resulting in a higher level of fear and anxiety. “When you are living in a world of slow change, it’s not a great challenge to your confidence in your own mind and your own resourcefulness but the more rapid the rate of change, the greater the challenge to your trust in your own resourcefulness, in your own intelligence, in your own mind, in your own ability to make appropriate choices and decisions. To say it more simply, the more rapid the rate of change, the greater the challenge to your self-esteem.” Dr. Nathanial Branden.
People require a lot more support now than they did before the pandemic. In his book that keeps on giving, Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker raises these points that are very pertinent to what we’re going through: “Only when you operate from a combination of your strengths and self-knowledge can you achieve true – and lasting – excellence”. He tells us that to live a life of excellence; we must ask ourselves these questions: What are our strengths? How do we perform? How do we learn? What are our values? Where do we belong? What should we contribute? He said, “Do your organization’s ethics resonate with your own values? If not, your career will be marked by frustration and poor performance.”
I believe there would be tremendous value in helping team members find answers to at least three of these questions.
Art for Muriel’s Blog by Iraqi Artist Mariam Beirouty
