The Simple Truths of How to Motivate our People
By Ernie Chen

“What can be done for our employees has already been done and why should we bother anymore?” The world is changing so rapidly that by the time we decide to give, their needs changes. Is this the end of the era of motivation? Or are we gaining on it and making a difference.

Organizations today need energized people to keep them competitive. The key to sustainable motivation is to create powerful partnerships. People who feel a sense of partnership with the company continually uses words as my, our and us such as “my company,” “our products,” “it’s all of us making it happen.”

According to Jim Harris, the 5 key strategies to creating powerful partnerships:

1. Squash status barriers
2. Open the company books
3. Pay for performance, not titles
4. Share the bad times as well as the good times
5. Serve the frontline partners first
   

Employees no longer aspire for big salaries only. They want that and more. Employees want to have a great sense of ownership and to be part of something bigger than just being an employee. Organizations must strive and continuously create opportunities for employees to be part of a much bigger picture. Creating powerful partnerships is not something difficult. All organizations need to do is to look into the fundamentals of what is good for their people. It is that simple. Organizations just tend to complicate things and that makes it difficult for the people to understand what’s in it for them.

A great example of why it is important to create powerful partnerships with your employees is something I learned from a great book, Getting Employees to Fall in Love with Your Company by Jim Harris many years back. The author offered this piece of advice, “If you take care of your people, they will take care of you. If you don’t take care of your people …….. they will really take care of you.”

Last updated - 30 May 2004