Week 11 Application Assignment - Felipe Camacho

This week I had the chance to spend some time Bill Baquet, owner of the company I work for, CSI Fullmer. Bill is a 36 year veteran of the contract furniture industry having started as a salesman when he was only 28. In that time he has started and or purchased half a dozen companies. This, he says, will be his last. I took the opportunity to ask him about the tools he has used over the years to motivate employees of all sorts.

To begin, I briefly explained the concepts of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). He needed no explanation and immediately proceeded to give me examples of how he measures his employees’ desires. In my case he pointed out he knew that because I had voluntarily pursued a position selling financial products that he could begin training me for an account management position. He saw on my resume a varied skill set that he could take advantage of for the benefit of the company but that at the same time he could challenge with new responsibilities.

I’ve been with the company now seven years and in that time two other team members have been promoted to account management, one other designer from my department and a former customer service representative. I asked Bill why he would promote account managers, who are paid a base plus commission, versus simply hiring outside sales people, who are commission only. He answered that, besides affording both the company and the employees a way of increasing their income, the company can retain personnel who are seeking to move up instead of losing them and the training already invested in them. In addition, the newly promoted account managers have a transition period in which they train their replacements while training for sales skills themselves. Note that in our company training is on the job, there are no formal training programs in place.

Having learned the above I asked Bill about how he maintains a level reward system, being that not every employee gets a chance to promote to account manager. We talked a little bit about Martin and Schmidt’s (2010) notion that employees who feel aren’t getting an equitable part of the rewards may balk. Bill quickly pointed out that people are aware, and respect the fact, that bonuses are a perk the company offers voluntarily. Bill related that bonuses are effective as a reward for employees when they work hard, doing their job, to keep the company moving forward profitably. There is no expectation that employees go above and beyond fulfilling their job descriptions, for which a different reward system, like equal profit sharing, would probably be better. This made sense to me; I have noticed that my coworkers are always happy, and genuinely appreciative of the semi-annual bonuses the owners have given out almost without fail in my seven years working for them.

Lastly, we talked about how the company keeps employees engaged in the daily operations of the business. In the course of a day, small company as we are and as busy as we get, it’s not unusual for staff to get into a rhythm of simply trying to keep up with the workload, let alone have time to engage in thoughtful execution of tasks with a mind towards process improvement. We do have weekly staff meetings that are informational with regards to the operations and business opportunities on hand, but they stop short of consistently sharing pertinent financial information. I shared with Bill that some companies have found that “an open-book” management philosophy helps engage employees (Heymann & Barrera, 2010), and asked if this something he’d ever considered. To this he had a very simple and short response, that that information is on a “need to know basis”. He explained that the small size of our industry requires a higher level of discretion with such competitive information. Again, this is an understandable position, I have been in this industry 12 years myself, and it is no exaggeration that everybody knows everybody.

It was a very enlightening conversation with Bill about how he runs a small business. The reading this week offered some great concepts about employee engagement, remuneration, and motivation. In talking with Bill though, the practical applications of these became acutely clear. These are all good concepts but, like so many others, have to be considered on a case by case basis.

References

Heymann, J., Barrera, M. (2010) Engaging Employees in the Company's Profits and Their Own, Harvard Business School, pp. 1-28

Ryan, R., and Deci, E. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology. No. 25, pp. 54-67

Martin, J., and Schmidt, C. (2010). How to Keep Your Top Talent. Harvard Business Review, pp. 3-9