Posted on: Monday, April 29, 2002

60 SECONDS ON BUSINESS
Getting employees committed to cause

By Dr. Drake Beil
President, Solutions Inc.

Are you just involved in your work, or are you really committed? The difference is simple to understand. Think of bacon and eggs. The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

While involvement is good and necessary in some stages of work, commitment means additional motivation and implies greater effort. So what inspires commitment to the cause?

One of the most valuable things to review is your performance appraisal process. In a recent corporate study, Cawley and Levey found that one thing that turns people off, and one of the toughest things for supervisors and employees to deal with, is performance appraisals.

If we just look at frequency of action, it appears telling people they're messing up is a lot more common than praising them. Think about your own experience. Pick out 100 things you do in an average week, and count the number of times you're told "Good work!" You can do 99 right and one wrong, and chances are good you'll hear only about the mistake.

Employee reactions to perceived fairness (or unfairness), especially regarding praise or punishment, affect their motivation. When given the chance to share their opinions, employees show increased motivation to change and greater job satisfaction.

The importance of evaluations will only grow because of the enormous costs involved in doing it poorly. Forget about costly employment-related litigation or terrible workplace violence; the real concern is that more than 11 million workers report "health-endangering" levels of mental stress at work.

Reach Dr. Drake Beil at drake@60secondsonbusiness.