If an organisation wants to walk FAST, it can walk alone; but if it must walk FAR, its best bet is in its employees.
Once you employ a man, you employ his family. This statement holds true in any society regardless of its literacy rate, technological advancement, or economic system.
This is because any person who seeks to be gainfully employed pursues, not just his own well-being, but that of his immediate family or in cases where such an individual is a loner bereft of family encumbrances, his future well-being.
Getting the best out of that individual means his employer must motivate him in more than one front. And such motivations must come from a proven method which has been channeled through a perennial hunt for novel ways to increase his power of imagination, resourcefulness, creativity, and productivity.
Similarly, in the quest for organizations to achieve set goals, it is however, important to note that maximum participation is required. And for any organization to achieve maximum participation from its employees, they have to give their maximum support in return. This support can come in the form of salary raise, and it may also come in form of training.
This is necessary because every organization seeking to be relevant must continue to train and retrain their staff in order to keep up with trends and industrial innovations.
Staffers lagging behind in terms of training may not be able to keep up with the dictates of time, which may consequently discourage and make them lose interest in their jobs.
Another way the support can come is in the way of employee welfare. This can also come in form of paid sabbaticals, tangible allowances, flexible salary schemes and bonuses.
Motivation in terms of monetary reward is not enough, this is essentially why Douglas McGregor’s Theory Y underscores the importance of an effective reward system which eschews considerably from the monetary reward scheme.
An employee who has spent a considerable amount of years in an organization needs to be constantly self-conscious of his weighed value to his employers. This awareness can be permanently planted if, according to McGregor, rewards are put in place to address higher needs such as self-fulfillment.
In fact, when an employer successfully exploits this reward system, McGregor added that the employee will seek out responsibilities himself and not wait for them. More than all the aforementioned points is an enabling environment for the employee to thrive.
There are more “bosses” than team players in most organizations today. Bosses in quote because these individuals overtly dwell on criticizing their employees. They are constantly harping on the mistakes and weaknesses of their staff. Instead of being guided, the employees are teleguided. Instead of focusing on how to leverage on the strengths of their staff, employers use their weaknesses to talk them down.
This kills the morale and any potential the employee might have in contributing meaningfully to the growth of the organization. The employee draws back from making any input because he knows it will be met with stiff dismissal and cold rebuff. The harmful impact this will have on his productivity is better imagined.
All these shows that the employee clime on this side of the globe happens to be one particularly hardwired to ensure the certainty of failure. Most employers have assumed the sordid habit of not paying employees’ salary on time, but has made it a gleeful hobby to owe them for months.
Added to this is a widespread red tape and superfluous bureaucracy quite inessential in this age of borderless maps. How then do you expect a modicum of motivation from the employees?
Imagine, for a moment, a boss who talks a lot. He doesn’t hold regular meetings with his staff and once he does, he hardly takes any opinion contrary to his own. Once a staff says something that negates his view, he immediately creates a wall.
Again, he asks too much of everyone. He expects his staff to do a job he or she is not trained for. He employs a staff as a script writer, but sometimes, he or she does the job of a human resource officer; and there is no commensurate reward for the additional work.
And this is a job the staff should be prepared for before he or she is asked to do it. How would such an employee cope in such an environment? We must note that no working environment is perfect, but there are working environments that does not bring out the best in the employees.
Being a leader does not mean that you have to be in the front all the time, it has gone beyond that. Leadership is all about achieving results using other people.
Therefore, it is the inalienable function of management to mine the latent potentials in its employees through policies which will help the employees see themselves not only as workers, but also as major contributors to the overall success of the organization.
This shows that for the employees to thrive and to reach their full potential, all the aforementioned barriers need to be removed from the working environment.
Management should also encourage their staff to take on added responsibilities (in tandem with extant trainings) that they are okay with. This will help them apply and effectively put to good use the trainings they receive in their organization from time to time.
Not giving a trained employee more responsibility is like buying a Corvette, which is a sports car, and only driving it 10 miles per hour. It means you’re ignoring all the potentials and even misusing the car.
What’s the point of buying a sports car if you’re not going to put your foot to the pedal! This is the case when management does not allow the employees more opportunities to explore and do more in the organization.
Regular meetings with the employees is also important. This is usually the point where all forms of challenges hampering work progress is discussed and fresh ideas are juggled. If all these are done, no employee should expect his employer to perform below par.
