What Drives Employee Loyalty

Kristen Berman, Co-Founder of Irrational Labs.

How to apply Behavioral Economics to hack human nature for good

[andrewbrand]

This is a great employment literacy demonstration video which shows us employees how to avoid the traps played by the employers and earn real benefits from switching employers.

[DXmYb]

Can these benefits be used to buy groceries? Fund my retirement?

I'd much rather have higher pay, I would always choose higher pay over benefits.

[codacreator]

Pay should never be a question. Science shows us that if pay is too little, employees will be too concerned with getting by. If it's just enough, they'll spend their time trying to figure out how to get more. Overpay your people, take direct compensation out of the equation. Then, provide them with trust (autonomy), skill development opportunities (mastery), and a clear, positive vision (purpose).

Go read Daniel Pink's book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, where you'll find all the citations that support what I just told you. Management often mistakes gifts for motivators, but they can easily be misconstrued. Instead of trying to arrange the nuances of gifting to your advantage, follow the precepts outlined above. Do that, and demonstrate for your employees just how vital they are to your successful operation (stop telling them they're expendable -- show them how hard it is to get fired rather than how easy it is) and allow them to get comfortable with the knowledge that they'll have a long and fruitful career with you if they want it. Job insecurity can keep people from taking initiative, from climbing the ladder of responsibility because they have responsibilities outside that demand stability. I'm astounded at the number of "sales" positions that do this absolutely backward. Instead of building confidence and coaching people to perform at their peak, they let the cloud of doom loose on them, threatening their eventual termination if performance doesn't improve. You'll get compliance that way, but you'll never have have a winning team.

I like to use the NFL as an analog for positive business practices. They treat their employees like human beings, pay everyone according to position and direct participation (even league minimum players make a solid living), they have incredible benefits because they participate in collective bargaining through their labor union, the NFLPA, and take great pride in their association (for the most part). The coaching staff spends time developing players. Even veterans. Teaching them how to be better. They don't spend time telling them what they're doing wrong or chastising them for a dropped ball. Everyone knows when stuff goes wrong. It's how to improve performance so it doesn't happen again that matters. It's also understanding that no matter how good your people are, they will never be flawless that allows you to be a better coach. Even Tom Brady, arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game, doesn't win every game, every season, every Super Bowl. That fact did not and does not detract from his value. Nobody will ever bike an entire team of Tom Bradys. It's just not possible. But, just as Tom Brady had good and bad seasons in great part because of the people around him, you can develop a winning team that doesn't rely on everyone already being great before they get to you. Dick Vermeil was genius at seeing players whose potential had not been tapped and building them into great players. Some days even great players lose. But that always makes winning all the sweeter.

Managers who manage the clock, who nitpick KPIs, who hover because they feel a need to justify their existence, and who play favorites, kill team cohesion and motivation. Constant observation sends a message of zero trust. And what was the first factor of human motivation? Autonomy? Right. Trust. Accountability is another grossly overused term that is widely misapplied. I've seen companies resort to hourly accountability meetings to maintain productivity. Hourly? When are your employees supposed to be productive?

Years ago, we joked that the average worker only spent something like 4 or 5 hours a day actually working. The other 3-4 were spent in downtime activities: email, coffee breaks, water cooler banter, navel gazing. Then technology set about eliminating those downtime hours as though employees were goofing off and costing the companies money. What technology and many businesses fail to understand is that the 5 hours of high productivity the employees completed each day were dependent upon the 3-4 hours of downtime and the elimination of the downtime only slightly improved productivity in the short term. Long term, on a per-hour basis, productivity drops, moral disappears, and trust -- the first casualty of measurement -- reverses itself. An employee who feels like their employer doesn't trust them will in turn distrust their employer, driving down motivation and productivity. This starts a vicious cycle of carrot and sticking employees, which does produce short term improvement, but leads directly to disengagement, absenteeism, and turnover. Nobody is equipped to perform at maximum capacity for 8 hours without interruption. So why do we set the goal there? It eliminates any time for self-reflection which is vital to learning and improvement, eliminates periodic rest which allows for greater endurance, and allows for the discovery of process improvements that may present themselves during periods of great productivity, but which get lost by the drive forward. People aren't machines. Treating them like machines won't get you industrial assembly line output. It'll get you put out of business. We've got to remember that we're in business for people, with people, and by people. We need to treat them all as equally important. And remember: sometimes a bottle of wine is just a bottle of wine. You really shouldn't try to read too much into it.

[carlosdanger]

I remember when a prior employer gave us all a survey about our top 20 concerns about the workplace. We all picked "pay" as #1 and talked amongst ourselves to confirm what we picked. A month later they gave their presentation on the survey to us and announced that "pay" was our 15th out of 20 top concerns. It's funny

[USA_]

I pray 🙏🇺🇲 for American citizens who are laid off now (2022) & in the future. I also pray for employees who are loyal to their company & their careers.
May our country have a positive outcome for it's people -
May businesses rely little on layoffs & site closures.

[ericsmith]

Boo. This is ridiculous. With inflation constantly going up, people need money, not your stupid bottle of wine.