Restoring employee motivation and trust through leadership change

Business Management

Motivation and Communication at work; Performance management; Management Change; Influencing Skills; Time Management; Groups and Teams; Leadership styles.

Introduction company should come to realize it is in trouble when, in order to squeeze out a profit, staff turnover has been increased "dramatically" - higher than 40% in some departments - and turnover has been accompanied by a sense of "reduced motivation." That company's management should be acutely aware of its need to immediately address a falling-off in performance by employees, and a "mistrust of senior management" as well.

When employees mistrust their employer's leadership, that mistrust is a certain sign of a cancer within the company; and the problem, in a large number of instances, results from an apparent lack of leadership skills at the top levels of management. This paper will examine the likely reasons for these serious issues within the company, and will offer suggestions - through existing models and theories of management - as to how the company can regain the confidence of - and re-invigorate the production of - its most valued asset, the employees.

Employee Motivation and Communication Issues

Motivation. First of all, if there is a serious free-fall in motivation among workers, an analysis of why that is occurring is paramount to finding a solution. A good place to begin in determining what is wrong (for purposes of this paper we will call the company in question, "company E") is by looking at what employees need, and discovering if those needs are being met by management. According to Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Thinkers December, 1999, p. 1), the hierarchy consists of five levels: survival (or physiological) needs; safety / security needs; social needs; ego-status needs; and self-actualization needs.

Maslow, according to the Thinkers article, believed that motivation is "generated by the unsatisfied needs in the hierarchy," which does not seem to make logical sense in this case. For example, Maslow's second level of needs hierarchy, "security / safety" needs includes social needs such as job security. Given that "company E" has laid off more than 40% of its workers in some departments, job security should be a top priority for employees who remain on the job; so why would the unmet need of "security" be a motivational factor?

The other unmet need on Maslow's hierarchy in this workplace scenario would appear to be "ego-status" needs - including being held in high esteem by peers and having the ability to obtain power, self-confidence and prestige. Wondering whether or not you'll be the next to be laid off is not exactly a recipe for self-confidence. That said, it should be noted that in the Thinkers article, Maslow's theory "only fully makes sense when applied to life in general rather than the workplace in particular." And so, if managers at "company E" aren't able to understand and gain the trust of their employees inside the workplace, it's unlikely they will try to relate to their worker's lives outside the workplace.

Meanwhile, Herzberg's motivator-hygiene theory, though criticized by some researchers for seeking to explain "job satisfaction, rather than work motivation, without really measuring job satisfaction" (Knoop 1994, p. 683), takes the view that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are "separate dimensions." and, Knoop continues, Herzberg's position is that "Satisfaction depends on motivators that promote growth needs; dissatisfaction depends on hygiene factors that serve lower-order needs." In the case under review in this paper, "company E," the employees were not realizing the Herzberg "satisfiers" (achievement, recognition, work, and responsibility) needed for happiness, and they were not achieving "hygiene factors" (comfortable with supervisors, co-workers, and possible promotions) either.

Communication key part of good leadership, Guirdham (2002, p. 539) writes, is "the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success" of a company or organization. In order to accomplish those objectives, communication is pivotal, Guirdham continues (pp. 348-49). "Leaders need to be highly competent communicators," and indeed "leadership is essentially a communication activity," and the effective "conversational forms by leaders are positive, coherent," they "facilitate work-related and personal goals," they "increase members' identification with the group and decrease their need for legitimation."

And so, the leadership within "company E" would appear to be lacking in good communication skills, otherwise there would not be a performance drop and a mistrust of senior management. Why would staff that has not been laid off feel "more secure and therefore happier in their jobs" just because they survived the massive layoffs? Clearly, this organization's communication is non-existent, or has broken down severely.

The Management of Change

Lewin's Force Field model builds on the idea that forces, "persons, habits, customs, attitudes...both drive and restrain change" (Value-Based Management.net 2004), and the model is built with a major change challenge or issue at the top, "driving forces" listed in one column, and "restraining forces" in an adjacent column. In the case of "company E," utilizing Lewin's Force Field would be a way in which to investigate the "balance of power" in the key issues, to identify the players, the opponents and supporters, and how to influence each target group. If the company has serious problems in gaining the full trust of their employees, a Lewin-style analysis and appraisal would seem appropriate.

How does the Lewin Force Field work? The main steps include: a) describe the current situation; b) evaluate the desired situation; c) identify where the current situation will go if no action is undertaken; d) list all the forces driving change toward the desired situation; e) list forces resisting change; f) discuss and examine all forces - are they real, and can they be changed? These steps should go far towards at least bringing some of the company's positives and negatives out of the darkness for clarity and review.

As to "company E," the current situation might not have even been thrust upon it if something like the Lewin Force Field investigative methodology had been instituted; who was minding the store on both the "bottom line" side and the "workforce" side? Why were things allowed to get to this point - and why did management assume employees would be "happier in their jobs" just because they didn't get pink slips?

Company E. could also submit to some "radical" ideas for management change, as presented by Burgoyne, Reynolds (p. 151). With regards to "Management learning as discourse," the authors ask, do "radical or critical discourses, which might threaten or challenge the status quo...become transformed, modified or appropriated?" And is management willing to learn "a complex order of discourse where discourses compete or evolve, or is it stable and homogeneous?" The questions are asked because there are "tensions," the authors suggest, between discourses which emphasize "efficiency or people as resources" (not unlike company E) and discourses of "education and learning" which place emphasis on "personal development or emancipation."

On the subject of personal development, which company E. should encourage, McGill and Beaty (2001, pp. 85-86) write that in addressing personal development issues, an employer could devise a forum for workers to bring their issues forward. The one rule would be that the issue "is of significance" to the employee; the issues that could be discussed in the personal development session include: "personal motivation towards work"; relationships between managers and colleagues; priorities for one's self and the staff overall; the work direction of the near future.

Beyond personal development, another important concept is management development, which Burgoyne and Reynolds describe (p. 21) which is less "theoretical" and more "practical" than management learning, though both would be important to company E. In setting the stage for a better business future. "Management development tends to develop personal knowledge, repertoires and skills (e.g., time management, stress management, assertiveness, team work, presentations, influencing, negotiating, selling, personal development, counselling, interpersonal skills)."

And management education tends to develop "analytical and critical skills in the academic disciplines relevant to management." Those skills include operations management, economics, finance, organization theory, accounting, research, among others.

While many of the concepts mentioned thus far provide tools and keys to company E's ability to bounce back from its doldrums, without an understanding of how the organizational culture of a company influences its effectiveness or lack of effectiveness, company E. will remain in the dark. The culture of an organization includes "beliefs about the way work should be organized, the way authority should be exercised, people rewarded, people controlled" (Guirdham 2002, p. 46). It has been stated, Guirdham continues on page 47, that "structure, strategy or politics" are not prime movers of an organization, but rather the "organizational culture" is the prime mover.

Conclusion

Moreover, no company works in a vacuum: "Technological, social and market forces impose the need for change on organizations' structures and cultures," Guirdham explains (p. 53), and those dynamics "lead to modifications and the emergence of new forms." The bottom line for company E, is, doing the evaluation of what went wrong, setting sail for a brighter, smarter way of managing resources, and welcoming the modifications needed to deal with the forces within and without the organization which both resist and encourage change. It is pivotal for company E. To understand that profits alone to not reflect a company's vision for growth and success.