张杰云中的angel的故事:英文翻印

Employee Motivation

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1996 TEN article by Ed Zimmer, 734-663-8000, The Entrepreneur Network, Ann Arbor, MI.
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This article is in response to Edd Tury's questioning in last month's Growing Pains column of how to motivate employees.

The classic paper on this subject is one by Frederick Herzberg, One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?", published sometime in the '70s in the Harvard Business Review. (I don't remember the issue, but if you want a copy, I'm sure a librarian can find it for you.)

Herzberg was (and maybe still is) Professor and Chairman of the Psychology Department at Case Western Reserve. He's the father of the "job enrichment" approach to employee motivation, coining that term in that paper (and if still living, I'm sure quite distraught with the gross caricature others have made of that term in the intervening years).

The essential insight that he added to the subject is that job satisfaction is NOT the opposite of job dissatisfaction. Rather the opposite of job satisfaction is no job satisfaction and, likewise, the opposite of job dissatisfaction is no job dissatisfaction. And he went on to show that the factors that influence job satisfaction are different from -- and largely independent of -- those that affect job dissatisfaction.

Herzberg's paper, when I discovered it in the late '70s, caused a paradigm shift in my understanding of employee motivation. It resulted in a total reorganization of my company and in the way I viewed (and continue to view) employees and my responsibilities to them.

Following are some of the rules that evolved from my understanding of Herzberg.

Be decisive in hiring.
Every company has a personality -- a culture. If new hires fit into that culture, they'll adapt to what's required and learn to do the job. If they don't fit into that culture, they'll never learn and will be a continual problem to you and your employees.
Under expanding employee-rights law, you have like 90 days to make that determination. If they're not fitting in -- or even if you have reservations about their fitting in -- let them go! Once they've passed that initial trial period, you have an obligation -- moral if not legal -- to help that person become the best employee that he or she can be.

If you do let them go, make it clear that the problem is in the fit. They may well be a great employee for another company. Give them the chance to find out! Every person can eventually find a "fit". When they do, both they and the company will be happy. You'll not be doing either them or your company any favors by letting mis-fits stay.