This week, I interviewed my homer supervisor, Lydia Lee, who, while she was my supervisor, was the Director of Operations for College Advancement. Since that time, she has moved on and now serves as a manager in the Provost's office.
She expressed her frustration in being a manager in a bureaucracy because limitations exists within the structure that prevented her from being able to reward employees and motivate employees in a manner that she knew would better ensure engagement and retention of top talent. Lydia believed that the standard reward system of the university, which is to offer a 1-3% raise every year for "services rendered" for most employees and faculty, with no formal systems in place to encourage development or implementation of efficiency procedures, emphasized a 'culture' or environment of 'robots' wiling away the hours just to collect a check. She believed, as was stated in the article by Nohria, Groysberg, & Lee
(2008), that this was no way to motivate employees. Her inability to put formal systems in place(due to the structure of the university and administrative layers she had to get through to gain permission to implement something formally, she was left with allowing staff to engage in several informal social means that were not considered professional office decorum, yet, they kept staff with something to look forward to and was an "informal' reward, for work well done.
Lydia admitted to the fact that she is the worst kind of manager in that she doesn't like to hand hold employees and works better with subordinates who are self-motivated and get intrinsic value out of working like she does, rather than being motivated extrinsically. This, in an environment where compensation is knowingly unfair and unfortunately those who do the least, make the most, is a recipe for an environment where employees have low morale.
To date, there is now new management in the office who has made some corrections with regard to better aligning employees in positions and titles for which they are better suited, whether it is a promotion or demotion of sorts, however, the believe and subsequent behavior that employees are but cogs in a wheel of a machine does not address the motivation that employees need in the area of bonding, culture or defense.
Reference:
Nohria, N., Groysberg, B. and Lee, L. E. (2008). Employee motivation: A powerful new model,
Harvard Business Review, pp. 1-8.
Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new
directions, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, pp. 54-67.
It sounds like Lydia is working within a less than ideal system. However, as you may recall Nohria et al. (2008) found that the role of the direct manager was as important for employee motivation as were organization wide policies. They note, "many supervisors are regarded well by their employees precisely because they foster a highly motivating local environment, even if the organization as a whole falls short." You say that Lydia has used some informal mechanisms for motivating her employees. What did she do? Did she find these informal mechanisms to be successful?
ReplyDeleteLydia, recognized that staff worked hard and needed to relax, so she instituted Friday afternoon "playtime" once a quarter, where staff got together mid-afternoon at an agreed upon location for early happy hour. She gave personally purchased Starbucks cards to those individuals who suggested more efficient office procedures and hired a masseuse to come in once a quarter to set up a table in an empty office for staff to take advantage of massages. These actions went a long way in making staff feel appreciated and recognizing their efforts.
DeleteLauren-
ReplyDeleteYou did a nice job outlining the challenges a manager with limitations such as Lydia's, is faced with. With this stringent and meaningless standard-rate raise structure, it is easy to see how employees can lack motivation and quickly become disengaged. As a USC employee, I am quite familiar with the structure you just described, and have witnessed similar sentiments in my own department. This type of situation really speaks to the creativity of the individual manager, and whether they are able to "do more with less" in terms of creating ways to motivate employees.
Dawn,
DeleteI think it really takes a "people" person to thrive as a manager in the bureaucracy that is USC. Lydia readily admits, she is not that person and does better with those who find intrinsic value in their jobs. Given that, she did make extra effort to analyze what individual's skill sets were and tailor their duties accordingly, but within the confines of the job title so as to better insure the staff member was better fulfilled in their tasks. She also was good about managing according to staff need...meaning for those that needed hand holding and to accountable milestones to insure there was no "sluffing off," she would oblige, but for those of us who were self-managed there was no micro-management. In this way, she tried to give all staff the assurance that things were fair across the board.
Lauren,
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started my career in public relations, my first job was in a University. Though the stability and predictability of the job was attractive to me at the time, I agree that there didn't seem to be many tools at the disposal of my supervisor to drive motivation extrinsically. This type of environment seems to be indicative of organizations with large bureaucracies like university systems and government agencies. What types of things do you think would be effective in increasing intrinsic motivation given the fact that the system limits, or even stifles, tools of extrinsic motivation?
Ken
Ken,
ReplyDeleteI think I touched upon this in my response to Dawn before I saw your question. I think that if there is no opportunity for extrinsic incentives, a manager has to be very astute in recognizing the goals and skills of individual staff and to the extent that they can, allow the person to grow and find their own value in their job. This might mean that the job the person ends up doing is not necessarily what they were hired for, but still fits a need in the office. As long as the strategic goals of the office aren't compromised then there is value gained by both employee and firm. One example of this is the department I am in now. When I first started, I was hired as an assistant to pay bills and process donations and complete travel reimbursements. I really thought I was going to have a small coronary with the handling of donations and the data management of it....too much...way too much. Lydia recognized this and saw that my skill set was in organization and creativity. She relieved me of portion of my job and handled it herself until she was able to hire another assistant to do it. She knew I was self-motivated and trusted that I would recognize what she had done without telling me and act accordingly. I did. I began availing myself to development officers to put presentations together for them and managing all things having to do with the office running smoothly. There was no office manager and I basically created a job that was more to my liking. I filled a need and both the office and I benefitted as I found intrinsic value in my responsibilities I had created for myself.
Very interesting take on employee rewards, Lauren. I also found in my interview that rewards are often used to retain quality employees. This is important to maintaining efficiency within an organization. Did Lee discuss intrinsic or extrinsic motivation? Which did she see as more important to her employees?
ReplyDeleteHi there Shane, I just saw this moments ago. I am so sorry for not answering in a timely way. Lydia felt that most employees were motivated by extrinsic measures which is what posed the challenge for her. I say most because they are fundraisers....motivated by money and title. :-) THe two of us worked well together because I, like her, find intrinsic satisfaction in any gig I have.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I thought she could have improved in was her sometime obvious disdain for the attitude of people who were only motivated by pay or title. Oftentimes it was hard to hide.