Saturday, July 28, 2007

Motivation

Capital One employees are high performers partly because the company has found ways to keep everyone motivated. Motivation refers to the forces within a person that effect his or her direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior. Motivated employees are willing to exert a particular level of effort (intensity), for a certain amount of time (persistence), toward a particular goal (direction). Even when people have clear work objectives, the right skills, and a supportive work environment, they must have sufficient motivation to achieve work objectives.

Most employees (92 percent of them, according to one recent survey) agree that motivating employees has become more challenging. One reason is that many firms have dramatically changed the jobs that people perform, reducing layers of hierarchy, and jettisoned large numbers of employees throughout the process. These actions have significantly damaged the levels of trust and commitment necessary for employees to put out effort beyond the minimum requirements. Some organizations have completely given up on motivation from the heart and, instead, rely on pay-for-performance approaches and layoff threats. These strategies may have some effect (both positive and negative), but they do not capitalize on the employee’s motivational potential.

A second problem is that as companies flatten their hierarchies to reduce costs, they can no longer rely on supervisors to practice the old command-and-control methods of motivating employees. This is probably just as well, because direct supervision is incompatible with the values of today’s educated workforce. Still, many businesses have not discovered other ways to motivate employees.

Lastly, employee needs are changing. Younger generations of employees are bringing different expectations to the workplace than their baby boomer counterparts. Workforce diversity and globalization have added to this complexity because diverse employees typically have diverse values. Recall from the previous chapter that values represent stable, long-lasting beliefs about what is important in a variety of situations. These values influence what we want, what we need, and a what organizational should not to do full-fill those needs.

In this articles, we look at the foundations of employee motivation. Motivation theories fall into two main categories: content theories and process theories. Content theories of motivation explain the dynamics of employee needs, such as why people have different needs at different times. By understanding an employee’s needs, we can discover the conditions that motivate that person. Process theories of motivation do not directly explain how needs emerge. Instead, they describe the processes through which needs are translated into behavior. Process theories of motivation help explain why people behave the way they do. In doing so, they help us understand, predict, and influence employee performance, attendance, work satisfaction, and other outcomes.

Foundations of Employee Motivation

Mark Hawkins knows what it’s like to be challenged. The senior business analyst joined Capital One a few years ago and has been pushing his potential ever since. “The first few weeks you are playing catch-up, learning about a new industry and organization,” says Hawkins, who works at the credit card company’s British operations. “But pretty soon you are making decisions about how to take the company forward. There are so many opportunities and you are free to pick up as many projects as you can run with.

Capital One knows how to motivate employees. The Falls Church, Virginia-based firm starts by carefully screening job applicants and selecting those with an inherent entrepreneurial need for achievement. Then, as Mark Hawkins discovered, the company stretches them with challenging goals. “We expect associates to get out of their comfort zones and look for those ‘stretch assignments,’ ” explains a Capital One executive.

Employees are formally evaluated twice each year by supervisors and peers against specific behavioral competencies. They also receive plenty of informal feedback and encouragement. “You have to spend a lot of time working with people and giving them constant feedback,” says a Capital One executive. “It makes people feel valued and involved.” Employees are also motivated by financial incentives based on individual and organizational performance.

But Capital One’s dramatic growth over the past decade creates a challenge for co-founders Richard Fairbank and Nigel Morris. “As we become bigger, we have to make sure we preserve the spirit and the magic of Capital One,” Fairbank says. “Now we’re at 20,000 [employees], and it still has that entrepreneurial spirit. But it won’t be easy.”