Diversity At Work – The Benefits – A study by Artur Victoria

The work itself is a most important contributor to individual motivation.

A job can be interesting or boring, challenging or taxing, creative or stifling, easy or difficult. The manager’s attitude toward the man and the job is significant here, as is job content.

One vice-president of employee relations really believes that the way to keep an executive happy is to keep him busy. Consequently, he loads his people with make-work projects and mundane, boring, mechanistic chores, while he saves the really important jobs for himself. This obsolete concept of motivation has significantly reduced productivity and contributed to relatively high executive turnover.

Executives are not interested in volume for volume sake; they need work that fully taxes their creative energies and analytical abilities.

They need important, rewarding work.

Not to provide stimulating work is a major cause of management failure because it contributes to unsatisfactory interpersonal relationships and effectively shuts off communication. Contrast the vice-president of employee relation just mentioned with the human resources executive who challenges his people to come up with meaningful goals that are attainable through improved productivity, costs, market position, and delivery.

It is easy to understand where one fails and the other succeeds.

Giving people real responsibility forms the basis for job enrichment and job enlargement; it means giving a wide latitude of authority, control, and accountability. This permits a man to contribute from the full range of his knowledge and experience; it draws out his potential.

Advancement is a related concept. Most people want to get ahead, and their jobs should be the platforms from which they spring to new heights. Therefore the job must contain developmental types of assignments, opportunities for broadening, and the chance to be considered for promotion.

The manager who understands motivation pays serious attention to these matters and therefore does not have time to second-guess his people, finish their work before they can do it themselves, interfere in their operations, or closely control or supervise.

A good manager uses his human resources to the full extent of their capabilities and willingness to contribute.

This implies growth, another great satisfaction. The job and the manager must provide opportunities for personal growth and development. Jobs that do not do so will go begging in the future.

It is likely that the job offer of the future will include specified opportunities and plans for an individual’s growth and development-in recognition of his needs for new knowledge, skills, and experiences and the organization need for special skills, abilities, and talents. Education will be part of this package, because an educated employee is a more valuable employee.

Providing salary, status, and the rest may keep employees from being dissatisfied, at least temporarily, but it does not substitute for the satisfaction; it does not create the conditions which will help to generate real motivation from within.

Lower-level needs (dissatisfies) do not have nearly the impact on an organization ability to attain its goals as do higher-level needs (satisfaction) such as achievement, recognition, the job itself, and opportunities for development and advancement. Interestingly enough, the satisfaction cost less, yet yield far greater returns to an enlightened management.

While organizations give their managers explicit instructions and training in the utilization of physical and material assets such as plants, facilities, money, there is a clear lack of direction for the management of human resources.

There is a tendency to hide behind the fact that all development is self-development, but the truth of the matter is that individual growth and development of potential are dependent on the interaction of man, manager, job, and environment. Management must provide the organization, climate, opportunity, and supervision which encourage and foster development.

When an executive finds that his satisfaction needs are not met, if he chooses to remain with the organization he becomes a dropout. He transfers papers from the in-basket to the out-basket.

Although he is usually a long-service employee who has made significant contributions in the past, he is not necessarily an old man.

• He is uncertain, hesitant, and fearful.
• He tends to block innovations and suppress bright young comers.
• His attitude is negative and he is not likely to take risks.
• He enjoys the comfort of security, and his operation usually reflects stability; no real swings up or down.

A helpful hint to avoid having executives become dropouts is to demand excellence year after year by means of exacting performance standards.

Fear can be positive motivation and in the short run can produce impressive results. But the fear of failure is in opposition to the need for achievement which is a prerequisite for success in a competitive situation. The individual whose primary motivation is a need to achieve is looking for the rewards that accompany success, whereas the fear of failure merely motivates him to avoid the consequences.

The manager who is afraid to fail will seek the safe and easy way chooses low-risk situations even though they promise a low return.

As an example of fear motivation, the general manager faced with an absolute need to expand first tries to purchase additional goods or services by sub-contracting the work at a lesser profit. In the event that this is not possible, he seeks excuses for delay or tries to get people to make his decision for him. Such a man will expand the old plant first, ignoring the basic economic facts, until he is forced to build and staff a new plant operation.

* Artur Vitctoria is the President of the Board of the Association Friends of Brazil Navy acting in Europe and portuguese speaking countries.

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