The Power of the Joy of Work

Editor's Note: Today's post comes to us courtesy of guest contributor Chris Dobyns.

Let’s face it, despite what any employer does to try and make the work environment a better place for employees, you’re still asking people to be somewhere other than where they’d probably rather be and to perform work. It’s only going to get just so “good”, no matter what you do. 

One of the Keys . . . Variation

Over the course of several decades, I’ve managed to figure out that employee satisfaction can be enhanced by, among other things, varying people’s assignments periodically.  Fairly recently we had an unusual opportunity in our work unit, that was pretty far afield from our regular portfolio and standard work product.  In support of a conference presentation, we realized we needed to produce an overview video about our organization, with a very short turnaround time. And when we requested assistance from our multimedia department, we received the politely perfunctory (and always irritating) response, “we’re too busy”. 

You Can Go Your Own Way . . .

So, I solicited internally for folks who might be willing to work on this video, and got a handful of takers.  In fairly short order, we developed a storyboard and a script, recorded the narration, edited a soundtrack, and selected a series of video clips and still photos.  Post-production brought all the pieces together in a two minute video suitable for primetime – and was completed in less than five days.  Unfortunately, due to a lack of necessary software, combined with some unique “limitations” of our line of work – most of this video development needed to be conducted at home, and after normal work hours. 

After seeing the finished product, the group that contributed to this effort were totally jazzed, and couldn’t say enough about what a great experience it had been, how they had learned so much about digital video production in such a short period of time. And maybe most importantly, just how much fun it had been working on something that was so different.

You Spoke Too Soon

A week or so later I made the mistake of describing to a long-service federal manager about the great experience we’d had in making the video. At that point, the other manager asked me how I had ensured my employees had been compensated for their time while working on the video. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that asking a federal employee to work on anything uncompensated was a cardinal sin that ranks right up there with practicing witchcraft (bad) or advocating for the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service (worse). Summoning my courage, I stated that none of my employees had ever even asked to be paid, and that they appeared to have volunteered simply for the “joy of the work.”

The Punchline Follows

That elicited the probably unintentionally scornful response from the other manager that, “our employees aren’t allowed to experience that level of joy from their jobs . . . unless we pay them.”

Thankfully, I managed to suppress my initial reaction, by reminding myself about the strict prohibition against violence in the workplace.

The Epilogue

When I later relayed these comments to the video “narrator”, she responded that, “if she’d had to be paid for doing that, it would have taken all the joy out of the experience.”  A direct quote and sage words indeed. 

After so long in this business, I still find myself surprised by these almost counterintuitive intersections of human behavior and motivation and where any allusion to pay and compensation almost rise to the level of being “dirty words”.

My suspicion is that there’s more than a smidgen of psychology in all of this. The continued challenge is operationalizing that psychology and finding the balance between the work that can be done and the work that must be done. 

Based on the above quote from my fellow manager, it’s maybe no surprise that the federal government still has a ways to go in understanding how people really want to be paid and managed.  More surprising is never to discount the benefits of encouraging employees to take on new experiences that oftentimes can be fun, and reinforce the possibility and the power of the joy of work.  

Everyone probably has a different perspective.  What’s yours?

Chris Dobyns, CCP, CBP, is Manager of the Office of Human Resource Strategies for one of the largest U.S. intelligence agencies. The Office of Human Resource Strategies is responsible for compensation and incentives, occupational structure, recognition and rewards, HR policy, and human capital program evaluation and assessment for his Agency. Chris has worked in the area of compensation for more than 30 years, and has been employed in various compensation-related positions by a number of large, private sector companies including, Sears, Roebuck, Arizona Public Service and Westinghouse Savannah River Company.

Image courtesy of fotolia, "Happy Young Businesswoman" by Rido

Comments

[Jacque Vilet]

Great post Chris. The same is true (in my opinion) of extremely creative people who are motivated by the thrill of discovery and by creating break-through products/services.
I disagree with those who say that money is always the primary motivator. Thank goodness!

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Thanks, Chris, for three LOL moments while reading your insightful story.

Quite right, on all points, according to the leading behavioral psychologists. Intrinsic rewards received from generous benevolence and social fellowship motives are extinguished by external rewards that reclassify the transaction into a commercial exchange: people will do things for free (change a tire, fill a sandbag, etc.) that they would refuse to do for a wage. How you are rewarded shapes the way your motivations are satisfied. It's a context thing.

[Chris Dobyns]

Hmmm, I had to go looking for the three comedic departures - from the otherwise seriousness of this topical posting. They would be made all the funnier, if only they weren't true.

I briefly mulled over the idea of weaving in the concepts of market norms versus social norms, but figured they were already in evidence implicitly - and Jim was nice enough to reinforce the point by his reference to them.

[Joe Thompson]

Chris, Another excellent post.

I think that your experience - and that of the video "narrator" add further empirical evidence to Dan Pink's observations in "Drive." The part that I shake my head at is that these are not really new or arcane concepts - they seem to be well documented across time, geography, and industry. Yet, they seem to be utterly foreign to so many managers, executives, and even Human Capital practioners!