In my daily blog, I write regularly on broader topics around the idea of employee recognition – employee engagement, motivation, meaningful work, the value of values, and more. Here on Compensation Café, I try to focus my posts on topics that link directly to the topic of compensation, but I’m thrilled when my two blogging worlds collide in unexpected ways.
For example, over the weekend I was reading an article in the McKinsey Quarterly about the “meaning quotient” at work. The researchers see this as the third-level measurable quotient for effectiveness and impact, following the much better known intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ). I knew this would make a great post in my daily blog, but the longer I read, the more I knew I would have to share this with fellow imbibers at the Compensation Café.
First, an explanation of what the researchers mean by “meaning quotient”:
When we ask leaders about the ingredient they think is most often missing for them and for their colleagues—and by implication is most difficult to provide—they almost invariably signal the same thing: a strong sense of meaning. By “meaning,” we and they imply a feeling that what’s happening really matters, that what’s being done has not been done before or that it will make a difference to others.
I think nearly all of us will agree that “meaning” by this definition is both important, but also hard to pin down. How do we know what has “meaning?” As the more skeptical among us will ask, why does this even matter? The researchers tell us:
When a business environment’s Meaning Quotient is low, employees put less energy into their work and see it as “just a job” that gives them little more than a paycheck. The opportunity cost of the missing meaning is enormous. When we ask executives during the peak-performance exercise how much more productive they were at their peak than they were on average, for example, we get a range of answers, but the most common at senior levels is an increase of five time.
A five times increase in productivity – from knowing that our work is meaningful. Not too shabby. Indeed, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer tell us in The Progress Principle that the number one motivator for employees, by far, is making progress in meaningful work. In other words, we can’t wait until the annual bonus or the end of a multi-year project to acknowledge, praise and recognize the meaningful work occurring along the way. We need to be far more deliberate in our efforts to “catch someone doing something good."
Finally, here’s the link to compensation I promised. The McKinsey article ends with several strategies to uncover the Meaning Quotient. Strategy #3 is “Use small, unexpected rewards to motivate”:
When business objectives are linked to compensation, the motivation to drive for results is rarely enhanced meaningfully. The reason is as practical as psychological. Most annual-compensation plans of executives are so full of key performance indicators that the weighting of any one objective becomes largely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Furthermore, most compensation plans typically emphasize financial metrics whose results depend on myriad variables, many beyond individual control. On top of that, most companies don’t have deep enough pockets to make compensation a significant driver of MQ in the workplace.
The lesson here is that when we aren’t expecting a reward, even a small one can have a disproportionate effect on our state of mind. And that’s also true of employees in the workplace…
Some managers might dismiss these as token gestures—but employees often tell us that the resulting boost in motivation and in connection to the leader and the company can last for months if not years. As Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart Stores, put it, “Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free—and worth a fortune.”
It always comes back to the difference between incentives (if you do X, you’ll get expected reward Y) and real recognition (now that you’ve achieved X, here’s unexpected praise and reward Y).
How well do you understand the meaningfulness of your work? On a scale of 1-5 (1 is low, 5 is high), how do you rank your own “meaning quotient?”
As Globoforce’s Head of Strategic Consulting, Derek Irvine is an internationally minded management professional with over 20 years of experience helping global companies set a higher ambition for global strategic employee recognition, leading workshops, strategy meetings and industry sessions around the world. His articles on fostering and managing a culture of appreciation through strategic recognition have been published in Businessweek, Workspan and HR Management. Derek splits his time between Dublin and Boston. Follow Derek on Twitter at @DerekIrvine.
Comments