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Keeping and Motivating the Best Employees

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Keeping and Motivating the Best Employees

In "You Win With People" we talked about the need to hire the very best people to build your team.  Now that you've done that the question becomes, how do you keep them, and how do you keep them motivated.

Much has been written about Employee Retention and about Motivation.  But most of what has been written has been written in terms of the average employee.  In fact, if you are measured at all by your company in this area, it's almost always a measurement of employee retention.  But all turnover is not bad turnover, so a retention measurement is actually a false measurement of how you're hiring and firing practice helped the company.

So back to the question.  How do you keep and motivate the best employees that you've hired?  All human beings have basic needs that must be met, starting with food and shelter.  So it's obvious that you must pay a fair wage and provide adequate benefits or people won't be able to stay with you.  But once the basic needs are met, does it require more money or more elaborate benefits packages to keep the best employees?

In reality, neither are truly required.

Pay and benefits only go so far, and the best employees, the intelligent, self motivated, team oriented, results oriented employees are not out to squeeze the last dollar from their employers.  The best employees have other needs that must be met and the good news is that you, their manager can meet these needs yourself.

Recent studies of highly motivated employees show that once their basic needs are met that other factors keep them motivated and interested in their jobs.   Here are the 12 questions that the best employees want to be answered:

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?

2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work

right?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best

every day?

4. In the last 7 days, have I received recognition or praise

for doing good work?

5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about

me as a person?

6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?

8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job

is important?

9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?

10. Do I have a best friend at work?

11. In the last 6 months, has someone at work talked to me about

my progress?

12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn

and grow?

It's important to note that of these 12 questions, 11 of them (all except number 8) are controlled locally by the employee, the manager, or the supervisor.   This means that the first and second line managers have enormous control over their ability to motivate and retain the talented employees that they've hired. You can even argue that you directly impact number 8 based on how you represent the company.

Look back at your own career and think about the people you've worked for and which one's you were most willing to follow.  Were these the needs that that leader met for you?

Goals and Objectives

Picture this scenario and see if it seems familiar to you.

"Dave, I need you to give me the goals and objectives for your group for the new year".

"Sure boss.  What would you like them to look like?"

"You know.  The usual.  Increase productivity by 10%.  Reduce your headcount by 15%. Implement some new controls. Oh, and I need them in two days."

Frankly, I've had this discussion about 25 times in my career and it always made me just a little bit crazy.  Without any real look at what is going to happen this year, or any idea what the top executives are shooting for, I'm going to lay out my department's goals for the next year.   Then I'm going to drive my people to meet these goals so that I get a good review and an increase in salary.

Not only does this scenario ignore the direction that should be set by the top executives, but it also misses the single most important reason you are in business.....  The customer.  So, while you're out doing the victory dance for meeting your objectives, your customer is sticking sharp pins into a voodoo doll that bears a remarkable resemblance to you.

Let's cut right to the chase here.  When you create your departmental objectives based on the above conversation, the only thing you are really thinking about is getting the task complete so that you can check it off your list.  You're not thinking about customer satisfaction, or how you are going to improve quality, or even major initiatives that you know (or don't know) are coming your way.  You're thinking about getting the boss off your back.

And why not?  The exercise above is just that, an exercise.

So, how should objectives really be set?

From the top down.  The very top.  The CEO of your company should be sitting down with his top executives and laying out the 2 or 3 top priorities for the company for next year.  Those priorities represent the vision for the company.   Each executive takes those 2 or 3 priorities and determines what they can do to support the vision.  Working together the executives assure that the goals that they are passing down to the next level of management are consistent with each other and with the overall company goals.

Nothing can do more damage to a company and its customers' then major functional areas with conflicting or unrelated goals and objectives.

After the buy in has been received at that level, those visions and goals are passed down to the next level of management, where more specific goals and objectives are designed and shared with their customers.  It's critical that everyone in the company see and understand the vision from the top, and that everyone understands what they are doing to support the vision.  By developing a company vision at the top and then developing goals and objectives that explicitly support those goals you can then be sure that you are supporting the companies true goals.   Then when you look at what you have accomplished for the year you and your customers will be looking at the same results.

So, how should you act on this? 

Start now.  And start by asking your boss for the goals and objectives of your senior executives so that you can stay in synch.  Plant the seed that you would like to see them to make sure you are marching down the right path and then share what you have developed with your customers.  If nothing else it will highlight where you and your customers are going.

Remember, developing goals and objectives for your team that are fundamentally aligned with the companies strategic objectives is a fundamental part of good management.

This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Below Dave details cost savings that can be claimed by implementing automation and self service as part of your deployment project.

Read Dave’s other guest post on rationalizing your apps prior to a Windows 7 deployment >>

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Imagine that you have finally completed the following phases of your project:

Core Architecture, Gold Image Build and Test, Application Rationalization, Testing, Testing, and more Testing

Now you need to get your images deployed to end users…well this is a problem because most organizations lack the forethought to automate this process.

So when it comes to deploying Microsoft’s operating systems there are really two choices that we are normally presented with: Lite Touch and Zero Touch. Let’s take a moment and define both of these:

• Lite Touch = Some manual intervention from a desktop analyst or from user driven menus.
• Zero Touch = Fully automated builds when an administrator can choose to deploy operating system upgrades on demand.

Now do either of the above work… the answer is yes absolutely. The issue is that all of this requires Careful coordination and communication to end users. This process normally involves hiring project managers, business analysts, corporation communication specialists, and costly IT Engineering time.

My question is this: We are in a world where we can get applications delivered to all of our phones by simply clicking in a portal and having them magically installed. We can change devices and simply re-deploy these applications from the same portal.

WHAT IF… you could do the same thing for your Windows 7 deployment. Just treat the Windows 7 deployment as nothing more than a complex application. Allowing end users to click on a Windows 7 upgrade icon in a portal. Then have them them schedule their own upgrade for a time that works for them.

Check out this product from 1E Software called yes you guessed it, 1E Shopping:

Does this mean death to the manual spreadsheets… well probably not – we always seem to return to what we know and love. I have personally deployed this product and have seen the impact it has on the classical approach to operating system and software delivery. The only requirement for Shopping is that a customer must already own and have configured System Center Configuration Manager.

The best part of this application is that it can be easily be installed and configured in less than five consulting days.

So I want to wrap up this post with a little bit of simple math for everyone:

• Assume each Windows 7 Upgrade costs an organization $3000 per desktop.
• Assume that approximately 50 % of deployed software is not used.
• Assume that each request for Software costs an organization $200 (BTW This is a really safe number) I haven’t seen it much lower than this.
• Assume it takes over 5 business days to receive the software after a request.

Now…here is a look at the old way!

Deploy 1000 Desktops x $3,000 each = $300,000 in resource costs

• Assume 25 applications averaging 100 each with 50 % unused and deployed to all workstations. 25 Apps x 1000 Desktops x $100 Average License Cost = 2.5 /mil investment in software. This would work out to having approximately $2500 in software on each desktop – You all know this number is really low!
• Assume that the organization receives 20 software deployment requests per week for 52 weeks per year. 20 Request x 52 Weeks x $200 average cost = $208,000 in resource costs to deploy software.
• Assume that it takes 5 business days to receive your software once requested. Well you do the math on this one – quantify the cost of lost productivity for your employees!!!

How about the new way!!! Take the opportunity to incorporate this organizational change into your Windows 7 projects.

From my previous post on application rationalization:

• Deployment costs reduced by 30 % simply by “Rationalizing” the number of applications that need to be ported to Windows 7 and automating the delivery mechanisms for the images. You could easily save over $90,000 in soft costs out of the gate.
• Reduce the amount of Software Renewals, Support, Deployment, and licensing costs. Once again we “Rationalize” all of our apps. Assume a 50% savings for your organization what does that return? How about an estimated 1 /mil + savings in hard and soft costs. By the way – now that you have a tool that helps rationalize this – think of the savings the next time the licensing police come visit you.

Add in savings from using automation and self service:

• Reduce the amount of annual software deployment costs by over 50%. Savings of over $104,000 in soft costs.

Assume your budget for this Windows 7 project was around $500,000. I will leave you pondering those numbers. Now of course remember there is an acquisition cost of new software that would save money. The nice thing about 1E is that all of their software pretty much pays for itself very quickly.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far.

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About Dave Kawula

Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry and a senior consultant with IE. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.

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