Thank you too for your comments, which also add a worthwhile element to the discussion.

I think I have partially addressed the outside/inside perspective in my response Joanne. Just let me add, that we spend approximately 50% of our waking life at work, and thus it seems to me that makes it imperative to find a way of aligning our abilities/interests with what we do at work. The failure to do this is what I call human economic waste, and is a huge cost to both the individual as well as society, let alone to the effectiveness of the organisation. What I am proposing is a means of trying to solve that problem. Is it perfect? Probably not. The problem is I don’t see any other alternatives being put forward and if we can eliminate even a significant part of that human economic waste it has to be a massive improvement.

You pose an interesting question in asking what you think the employees would consider to be effective, but at a micro-level I am sure the overwhelming response would be the freedom to do their job to the best of their ability, and eliminate all the things that prevent this. Often this may be management and the bureaucracy imposed by managers and I would like to think this approach of treating people as assets would be a catalyst in breaking down such barriers to improved performance, simply by engendering a more collaborative team-based focus.

Bay

Thank you for your very thoughtful and constructive comments.

I certainly agree that people’s motivation levels and hence their satisfation levels are all different, and for that reason I think it is a no-win situation to try to develop organisational strategies to achieve either of those goals. My objective is simply to create an environment in which people can more easily motivate themselves and thus achieve more personal satisfaction. As you say stress is a personal response to a situation, and can be just as easily stimulated by the obessession of a would-be high-achiever as by unrealistic demands of an overbearing manager. I therefore don’t have any issue with the stress standards that you referred me to and think the solution I am proposing probably offers the best way to achieve them, and a healthy environment with the least effort.

Indeed I would say there is more than sufficient evidence to show that higher performing organisations are those where people have the highest level of engagement and thus as a natural corollary they must have people who are motivated and better satisfied, and less stressed. There is also enough evidence to indicate that employee-owned companies are generally market leaders in their respective fields.

I therefore submit that greater employee ownership offers a win-win and needs to be more actively promoted. I suspect that employee resistance to ownership is precisely the consequence of compartmentalised thinking that sees work and life as two different things, and the inevitable consequence of too much top-down, “command and control” management. The failure of the companies you cite is clear evidence of that.

Albeit with possible economic constraints, we all choose where to work, and for that reason could be said to work for ourselves. If you accept that as a staring premise, there is every reason why people would want to be co-owners of the business. Don’t you think it just needs a better selling job?

Bay

The fact is

I agree with what seems to be a central plank of your post, namely that motivating employees has to recognize that people spend the majority of their life outside of the organisational boundary, therefore what motivates them is likely to be substantially ‘out of sight’, more often than not ‘out of mind’, certainly to the employee and even more so the employer. I am not so sure about the notion that “valuing people as assets, putting them on the balance sheet and making them co-owners of the business is the best way of redressing this injustice and making individual and organisation alike more effective.” That seems to assume that people want to be thought of as assets, or co-owners. I also find myself curious as to what might be termed the ‘discourse of effectiveness’. What I mean by that is that effectiveness can mean many things to many people e.g. to the employer it might be work harder for less, particularly in the current climate. I wonder what employees would define ‘effective’ as being?…

Thought provoking, so thank-you!

Steve

The cognitive psychologist’s view (and mine) is that people in work have very different expectations from one another, and it is the nature of the individual’s expectation that drives their satisfaction level, and therefore their motivation. Very much in the same way that it is not the events themselves that stress us out, but rather the view that we as individuals take of them.

Not everyone wants to be an owner of the organisation is one thought I have. I remember the research at the production plants of the Luton car manufacturers (UK) which demonstrated many factory workers as wanting to come to work, get paid and be allowed to do the things they truly enjoy and that really matter outside of work – their families, hobbies, etc. This was referred to as having an “instrumental attitude to work”. This research is possibly out of date now given these production plants no longer exist!

Giving serious consideration to the structure of the working environment with regards to reducing unnecessary stress is as close as I can get to addressing the motivational issue on a global scale. In the UK a standard was introduced to legally ensure that organisations comply with establishing a healthy working environment. I find this a useful aide memoire for organisations attempting introducing a one-stop “enabling environment” (the standard talks about how demands; control; support; relationships; role; impact of change affect most people). Here’s the link if interested:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards/index.htm