Motivating Employee Performance - How NOT to Do It
I read recently in the Yahoo News about
a new twist in employee discipline - making
police officers who break department rules
wear hot pink "Hello Kitty" armbands around
the office where their fellow officers can
harass them into compliance.
An article titled, "Bad Thai Cops to Endure
Kitty Shame" says, "Thai police officers who
break rules will be forced to wear hot pink
armbands featuring 'Hello Kitty,' the Japanese
icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior
officer said Monday.
Police officers caught littering, parking in
a prohibited area, or arriving late -- among
other misdemeanors -- will be forced to stay
in the division office and wear the armband
all day, said Police Col. Pongpat Chayaphan.
The officers won't wear the armband in public."
Apparently the Thai police's normal employee
disciplinary procedures aren't working any
longer, including verbal warnings that often
produce no change. Senior officers believe
(correctly, in my opinion) that stopping small
offenses will stop some of the corruption and
vice that are rampant in Thai police culture.
It's the method that may backfire on them.
"'This new twist is expected to make them
feel guilt and shame and prevent them from
repeating the offense, no matter how minor,'
said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime
Suppression Division in Bangkok.
'Kitty is a cute icon for young girls.
It's not something macho police officers want
covering their biceps,' Pongpat said."
I'm not sure what effect this will have overall
on Thai police officers, but as a general rule,
humiliating people at work isn't an effective
behavior modification tool.
However, a sound, regularly used progressive
discipline is a must-have for businesses that
are growing past infancy and into adolescence.
In their early stages, many small businesses
get results by hiring people with an
'entrepreneurial' style and capabilities.
This kind of employee makes decisions, takes
risks and gets work done much like the people
they work for: they are fast, nimble and
goal-focused, without much need or use for
systems or structure. This style often fits
the newer business and is inevitable because
there are too few people for too much work.
But as the business matures and grows, the
management team must put more 'context' in
place for people to work in, or chaos will
ensue - more than a few entrepreneurial
people in a business is like having too many
stars on a basketball team, everyone whining
and hogging the ball.
What is appropriate business 'context'?
Remember in high school when the teacher
would hand out an assignment to write a paper?
He would say something like, "I want you to write
two pages on something that you did over the
summer." For many in the class, that kind of
assignment was too broad - they felt as if the
odds of failure were too high.
They didn't understand that the assignment
was to inject personality and individuality
into the basic, dull framework of the essay
form so that the teacher could see if they
remembered anything at all about language
and essay form from the previous year.
So they would ask questions, hoping to pinpoint
exactly what the teacher wanted in order to
get an "A" on the assignment. In
entrepreneurial businesses, this kind of
employee (who needs the answers in advance)
can't survive, and the business that hires
them is in trouble. But as a business matures,
these are exactly the right kinds of employees -
if they are provided more context.
That context often includes a defined process
for their job and guiding principles for how
you want the game played. These are often in
the form of service or productivity metrics,
but values and conduct principals can play a
part as well. To get employees to 'play'
effectively once the context is defined, there
must be both rewards and discipline, and the
discipline must be useful and serious -
setting standards, measuring regularly and
openly, and coaching people to performance.
Coaching against standards is the most useful
form of progressive discipline...after all;
discipline IS NOT "punishment," but the
progressive development of someone's ability
to perform in a prescribed manner.
In fact, the biggest mistake business owners
make is to equate "discipline" with "punishment."
Employees of all kinds respond well to
discipline because most want to perform in the
correct way and most (like the high school
students) perform better if you remove some
of the fog from their assignments.
Research by the American Society for
Training and Development makes it clear
that the top two reasons people fail on
the job are lack of clearly defined expectations,
and a lack of regular feedback. Given those,
most people will succeed at their assigned tasks. Employees of all kinds find punishment
distasteful; how and when it's delivered will
dictate whether it's effective in pushing people
toward effective behavior, or away from it. My
guess is that the silly "Hello Kitty" tactics
of the Thai police won't work.
Does your business need service or
behavioral standards, or the tools to
coach employees to meeting them...ask us how by clicking the link below...
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