This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Why People Work
Let's briefly revisit the reasons why people work. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, one of the strongest needs is to be secure. But feeling secure isn't always just about money, because security can be expansively defined to include other things, such as safety and trust. So, first, accept the independence and culture of volunteerism that is the natural result of demographics and the changing nature of contemporary employer-employer relations. Note that security can be a residual effect, a natural consequence of today's employer-employer dynamic. With security assured, people naturally look to the next level of hierarchy of human needs, relationships. Employee want a place to work in which their contribution and workplace relationships are socially acceptable; a workplace in which employees are proud to talk about with their friends; a place that enables them to walk through life with their heads held high. With that assurance, the employee looks even farther down the list of Maslow's hierarchy: the need to be recognized. Security and the desire to be employed someplace that garners respect are two needs that are easy to understand. But just as universal and essential is the need to be recognized.
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This is one reason why Bill Gates still works, why Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs come to work. There is just no denying the importance of ego and no shame in acknowledging that it is basic human need to want some strokes now and then. No matter how wealthy you are, you want to be recognized for what you have contributed, and if you can offer that in a workplace where you feel secure and are proud to work, then you are well on your way to engaging employees and eliciting from them that thing that they give only to people and organizations that treat them with respect and value their contribution: extraordinary effort.
Because we are working through Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, let's look farther down the list. We have covered security, and the need to be recognized. Next, you can't ignore the importance of relationships and the role that relationships play when building a sense of workplace camaraderie. Please don't dismiss workplace camaraderie are unimportant or frivolous, because camaraderie isn't about wasting time in the lunchroom or hanging around the water cooler talking about golf or sports. It is a major contributor to why people come to work. Fostering camaraderie is ultimately about productivity, and its importance has been heightened in the workplace only by the changing the nature of the family, especially since the end of World War II.
How has the changing dynamic of the American family affected workplace camaraderie? Believe me, it is less of a stretch than you think. Here's why. When I grew up, I was no more than a 5-iron shot from the homes of my nearest relatives, and we gathered often. Every Sunday, the entire family sat down and ate together. My grandparents, my aunts and my uncles, we all sat down on a weekly basis. In American today, other than the people who live under your roof, on average, Americans live more than 120 miles away from their closest relative. The nuclear family is no longer the central social unit of American life. Yet the breakdown of the nuclear family hasn't changed that humans are social beings. So, the family needs to be replaced with something, some social unit. And that social unit is the workplace. People come to work to be at their social club—it's not a party club but a social club, a place for quality human interaction among people they know and trust. If that social club is supportive, allows people to trust one another, and has high camaraderie, that's not only what draws people to come to work each day, it's what makes them stay. So, when designing corporate infrastructure whose aim is to create a culture of engagement, it's imperative that you recognize the core position played by the work social club. Ignore it at your own peril.
I hope by now you can see the interrelated nature of the core elements and core requirements for engaging a workforce. Employees want to make a contribution while doing something worthwhile. They want to do this in a place worthy of their efforts. They want to be recognized for what they do, they want to work in a place with high camaraderie, and they want to work in a place where there is a high level of trust and respect. We haven't covered trust and respect yet, so let's close this chapter by focusing on them. Although these are the last items covered in this chapter about why employees come to work and why they stay, trust and respect are no less important than the previously introduced concepts
A core element of what makes employees stay at a job—and remember that all your employees are volunteers—is their trust in the organization and the respect the organization expresses to the employees (or that the organization helps engender from coworkers). This social exchange isn't difficult to grasp; I am sure you have experienced it in other areas of your life. If the organization believes in the employees and trusts them to do good work—and expresses that trust through the investment in career development, training, advancement opportunity, and availability to resources—surprise! The employees take that seriously and return the favor by trusting the organization. The employees allow the organization to make the decisions to propel the business forward; they also trust that the organization has the best interests of the employees in mind with every decision. With that trust, there is less cynicism because the goals of the organization and the goals of the employees are in sync. The more the organization succeeds, the more the employees succeed. It's a self-feeding cycle that accelerates and becomes more effective when more people commit to it from both sides of the equation.