A study that no doubt wasted money concluded employers could get employees to work harder by doing one of two things:
- Giving them meaningful work
- Convincing the employees their work is meaningful when it isn’t.
Please consider How to Get Employees To Work Harder Without Paying Them More.
A new study walks through a solution to an age-old conundrum for employers: how to make employees work harder without paying them more.
The answer is to give them meaningful work, according to research by economists Michael Kosfeld, Susanne Neckermann, and Xiaolan Yang published on the economics commentary website VoxEU. Or at least motivate staff to believe their work has meaning.
Knowing that you matter really does matter, according to the study, “which suggests that the provision of meaning can be a low-cost instrument to stimulate work effort.”
In a survey of 413 students in Hangzhou, China, academics got output to increase by telling a group of study participants that their data-input work was of great importance to a research project. Another group was told the work was just a quality check that would probably never get used. The performance of those told that their work was of great importance ranked about 15% higher in the data-entry task.
Flawed Study
Where’s the control group?
Stressing the negative to half the employees and the positives to another is hardly a valid test.
And as for giving employees more meaningful work … if companies could do that, they would have done so already.
Finally, purposely telling employees lies is going to make for really angry employees when they do discover the truth. … and they will if continually lied to.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
This is nothing new. Companies have been lying to their employees for many years. At the annual meeting of a former company the CEO got up on stage and told the workers not to worry or pay any attention to rumors of a buyout, it wasn’t going to happen and that the employees were their most cherished asset. 2 years later it sold out to the highest bidder and over half got a pink slip.
Employer-employee loyalty went out with the rotary dial phone.
Like you have a pension…
The purpose of Capital is to get a return – not to make employees comfortable – unless it increases the return. Now we have robotics, just raw survival may be the next paradigm. Eventually even capital becomes redundant with self replicating machines.
And it works both ways today. On day #2 the primary goal of any new hiree should be to find a higher paying job with more lucrative benefits – not to show any degree of loyalty to the one who signs his paycheck. When trust is gone in the workplace it thwarts progress. Productivity falls. When workers are lied to or see their friends sabotaged on the job – they learn fast. My point is that decades ago there was some degree of loyalty and trust. By and large, it’s gone. Not good.
Loyalty must be earned…for all sides. As a small employer I can say that many employees have NO loyalty to their employers, easily finding every excuse to not come to work, to not put in the extra effort when crisis is at hand, but always at hand when they need a loan, or a day off, or other considerations. I reward loyalty and any decent person would, but to pretend that is in soley the responsibility of the employer is narrow minded and actually insults the many employees that DO practice loyalty and respect for their employers and fellow employees. The reality for most business is that the employees who refuse to pull their share or extend the extra effort when needed push their load onto those employees who do care. Much of this is driven by deliberate divisiveness by those who want to destroy a productive society for the sake of power. When no one cares, no one wins.
I tell my boss I’m loyal as a mutt, but the day the paycheck doesn’t clear I’m out the door.
“How to make employees work harder without paying them more.”
Usual typo , it should read ” employee’s ”
“Motivate staff to believe” has a distinct ring to it under post communist state capitalism .
“…believe their work has meaning” helps avoid the question ‘ Is it better to employ someone to do nothing than to employ them to do something meaningless ‘ .
“Knowing that you matter really does matter…” but as we are prepared to lie to you you will never know , ha ha ha .
“The provision of meaning” provisions have costs , you will pay to be threatened , probably with “a low-cost instrument” .
“A group of study participants that their data-input work was of great importance to a research project .. ” translated into Western means something along the lines of ‘ if you mess up , the local party chief will be most displeased with the result of his work stimulation research project in which you are participating ‘ .
Etc.
All exemplary in learning what our future should be and the managerial methods to set about it . The subtle level of coercion implied reminds of the need to reinforce the background oppression and openly further the presence of doctrine based achievement platforms .
“How to make employees work harder without paying them more.”
Usual typo , it should read ” employee’s ”
Interestingly, that would depend on the intended meaning, as that one little apostrophe completely changes the meaning of the sentence. I think Mish intended the meaning he wrote, with “employees” being plural and all of them working harder. But if you add the apostrophe then “employee’s” is possessive and it means the objective is to make their work harder.
Nothing like keeping the population busy – would not want their energy devoted to idle thoughts.
Education gives meaning to what would otherwise be a very boring occupation. Capitalists do not hire unless a task contributes meaningfully to a profitable endeavor. Profits are the measure of value to society.
…
I have greased threads of bolts all day, operated a Xerox machine, cut grass along side the road with a machete, been hod carrier, optimized sewage effluent, performed repetitive measurements, investigated the obscure, optimized manufactures, studied war. Whatever work I do counts meaningfully.
Most studies today are total nonsense. This one is no different.
You’re missing the point. Employers don’t have to lie. Showing appreciation and interest in what employees are doing will motivate them. All kinds of non-monetary rewards (proving you can do something, helping a colleague, sense of honour, helpfulness towards others or customers) will motivate people a lot more on a daily basis than $1000/year more less. Greatest part is that it’s very low cost. And if such intangible rewards are not present on the work floor, it’s probably a pretty shitty business.
http://newtrendsinmanagement.wikispaces.com/file/view/103420.strip.gif/332462610/103420.strip.gif
Yes where is the control group of older pissed off workers who have been lied to for years!
The secret is to find self motivated people. Job skills are secondary. Education is third. It’s worked for me for 20 years.
“Our employees are our greatest asset…I say we sell them”.
There are basically 4 types of people in the working world:
Those that are able and willing to work.
Those that are not able but willing to work.
Those that are able but not willing to work.
Those that are not able and not willing to work.
Hire the top two leave the bottom two alone!
Employees that are good , are a huge asset to my small business selling $$$ price !…..
The buyer wanted to make sure key employees stayed . Understandable.
Most proud that (3) small companies i created are still showing a profit, and payjng taxes !……..
If an employee’s skills grow too much from doing important work, then they can go to the highest bidder seeking scarce resources.
The whole “lie to motivate” shtick may work for a while in a Chinese company, where the workers are all recent migrants from smaller communities not used to being straight up lied to on a daily basis. But over time, all you end up doing is destroying any credibility you may have had.
And it’s not just wrt employer/employee relations. Over time, as things once cherished, like “freedom”, is repeatedly shown to be nothing more than a cheesy flag on TV ads, people stop listening to that as well. Only the genuinely gullible still believe America is any longer some sort of “Land of the Free.” Just as very few in the Soviet Union believed much of what officials told them, towards the end. It’s all just a bunch of drivel, all the way down.
The end state of all of these systemic lies, is Mogadishu ’91. No faith in anything and anyone at all, beyond your gun. And perhaps God. If an official tells you it’s two o’clock and that his name is James, he’s probably lying to get you to stay at work a bit longer, so he can jump ahead of you in some line. So, not only do you not believe him. But you shoot him in the head as well. Since, why the heck not? The nonsense you’ve been told about shooting people being bad is, after all, just a lie as well. As evidenced by the officials telling the lies, themselves reserving armys and security details for their own use.
When you watch authority continuously increase its armament it tends to transfer that view, that ultima ratio is the only guarantee and that they see it as increasingly necessary to make sure that it is balanced in their favour.
“Another group was told the work was just a quality check that would probably never get used.
If it won’t get used, why do it to begin with?
All work should have value. Otherwise why should it be done? Keynes’ ridiculous notion of digging holes and filling them back in as productive work needs to be stricken from the lexicon.
Keynes was an ignorant government wack.
You can “strike it from the lexicon” but the army & other agencies of government will keep right on doing it.
Well the big corp I work for has a better solution. Every three months before a fiscal quarter they ‘restructure’ and ‘close positions.’ They open the nearly identical position with a slightly different title or scope and tell the fired employee they can ‘apply for it.’ Of course the salary’s less, vacation accrual starts over, and its often subject to new rules (must relocate to some city many states away, can’t work from home, whatever), but at least you wouldn’t be unemployed anymore. Usually they also add another chunk of work to that being pimped out to somewhere overseas. Then they can go to the bigwig meeting with their fabulous recent reduction in personnel costs. This ongoing HR-terrorism surely keeps employee motivation to be productive high. We assume.
Have to login under a diff account so wordpress won’t force my name onto this or I might be next.
This is more ubiquitous than generally perceived in this commentary section. I would venture to place it as a trend moving upwards, especially in transportation and mining manufacturing sectors. I was also a victim of this exact scenario. The HR-terrorism that roams the shop floor was once a liaison of sorts between management and personnel, but has now become the tally-whacker and law enforcement arm of the owners. It is so degrading to be in this place at this time of my life. Being an established Craftsman has no merit or significance any longer, and the slacker or “judicially acquainted” ankle-braceleted person is on equal terms and station in their program of bottom line feeding.
beatings will continue until morale improves.
the correct way to look at this is to ensure that all employees are contributing something meaningful. if they aren’t then their positions should be eliminated. you then communicate why their work is meaningful and you also communicate how they could improve their skill set to do even more meaningful (and likely valuable work ie., earn more) work and watch them blossom. if they don’t, replace them