With changing demographics and a more competitive job market, human resources are more challenged than ever before to hire, engage, maintain, and keep employees happy and motivated.  Workers want more choice and flexibility in how they approach tasks, for example, more opportunities to work collaboratively.  They look for more opportunities to change duties, for exploration, to learn, and to advance in their career in a less linear way.  It is not only desirable but essential for businesses to have motivated employees.  Today many human resource professionals are looking at how to design jobs, work environments, and cultures that motivate employees.

Job specialization is the earliest approach to job design.   Job specialization is efficient but leads to boredom and monotony.  Early alternatives to job specialization include job rotation, job enlargement, and job enrichment.

Job rotation involves moving employees from job-to-job at regular intervals.  When employees periodically move to different jobs, the monotonous aspects of job specialization can be relieved.

Job enlargement consists of making a job larger in scope by combining additional task activities into each job through expansion.

Job enrichment is concerned with designing jobs that include a greater variety of work content, require a higher level of knowledge and skill, give the worker more autonomy and responsibility, and provide an opportunity for personal growth.

Research shows that there are five job components that increase the motivating potential of a job:  skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.

• Skills
  • People will be more motivated if they are using a variety of skills in their positions, rather than one thing repeatedly.
• Tasks
  • Employees are motivated to complete tasks if they identify with them and have seen them through from start to finish.
  • When employees feel that their work is significant to their organization, they are motivated to do well.
• Autonomy
  • Employees like to be able to make decisions and have flexibility in their roles. Most employees will have lowered motivation if they feel they have no freedom or are being micromanaged.
• Feedback
  • Employees need feedback (both positive and negative) in order to stay motivated.

Quality of life in a total job and work environment is also an important part of a positive and motivating experience for employees.  The elements included in ‘quality of life’ include:  open communication, an equitable reward system, employees’ job security and satisfaction, participative management, and development of employee skill, etc.  Since a significant amount of one’s life is spent at work, jobs need to provide satisfaction for sustained interest.  Jobs provide employees not only a living but also help in achieving other goals such as economic, social, political, and cultural.

The concept of empowerment extends the idea of autonomy.  The idea behind empowerment is that employees have the ability to make decisions and perform their jobs effectively.  Instead of dictating roles, companies create an environment where employees thrive, feel motivated, and have the discretion to make decisions about the content and context of their jobs.  Empowerment is a contemporary way of motivating employees through job design.

A growing body of research on the relational structures of jobs suggests that interpersonal relationships play a key role in making the work experience important and meaningful to employees.  Interpersonal relationships can often enhance employees’ motivations, opportunities, and resources at work.

Though employees need to have some intrinsic motivation (internal motivation) to complete the tasks assigned to them in their roles, they also need to be motivated by their employers.  By designing jobs that encompass all of the core characteristics, you can help increase employee motivation, in turn improving performance.

WageWatch offers accurate, up-to-date benefit survey data, market compensation data and salary reports that will allow you to stay current with the times. This information is highly beneficial in creating the best salary, incentive, and benefits packages that meet or rival the industry standards. The PeerMark™ Wage Survey is the only Web-based custom survey tool that allows individual survey participants to select their competitive set for comparison purposes.  Our experienced compensation consultants can assist with your organization’s compensation needs.  We can help you ensure internal equity and compliance with regulations as well as help you structure your compensation programs to support your company’s business strategy and objectives.   For more information on our services, including consulting, salary survey data, benefit survey data, and market compensation reports, please call WageWatch at 888-330-9243 or contact us online.

Employee engagement levels are at their highest in years.  The Gallup Organization has been measuring levels of employee engagement since 2000.  Over nearly two decades, the annual percentage of actively engaged U.S. employees has ranged from a low of 26% in 2000 to the recent six-month high of 34% in 2018.  On average, 30% of employees have been engaged at work during the past 18 years.  Conversely, the percentage of actively disengaged U.S. employees has ranged from a high of 20% in 2007 and 2008, during the heart of the recession, to the current low of 13%.   On average 16.5% of U.S. employees have been actively disengaged over 18 years of tracking.

To better understand employee engagement levels, it helps to understand how Gallup categories the three different segments of employee engagement.  “Engaged” employees are involved, enthusiastic, and committed to their work while “actively disengaged” employees are unhappy at work and aren’t afraid to tell others about it; they are resentful that their needs aren’t being met and act out, potentially undermining co-workers.  The biggest group of employees are those “not engaged;” they are unattached to their work and while putting in the time, there is no energy or passion put into their work.  To summarize, the 2018 Gallup survey results categorizes employees as:

• Engaged = 34%
• Not Engaged/Disengaged = 53%
• Actively Disengaged = 13%

What is the cost of unengaged employees to an organization?  Gallup indicates that an “actively disengaged” employee will cost their organization $3,400 for every $10,000 of salary, or 34%.  For example, if an average salary is $60,000 per year, the cost for each disengaged employee is $20,400 ($60,000 x .34).  For a company with 1,000 employees, 13% are actively disengaged, for a total of 130 employees.  In this example, the total annual cost to the organization is $2.65 million (130 employees x $20,400).  This monetary loss to the organization is only for the actively disengaged employees and does not represent the loss among employees who are in the “disengaged” (53%) segment.  However, it is compelling to understand the cost for the most “actively disengaged” employees, knowing that the cost of total employee disengagement would be higher.

After computing the cost of disengagement, the focus shifts to increasing engagement.  Based on attributes measured by Gallup in their employee engagement survey, employees place the greatest importance on a role and organization that offers them:

• The ability to do what they do best
• Greater work-life balance and better personal well-being
• Greater stability and job security
• A significant increase in income
• The opportunity to work for a company with a great brand or reputation

How do organization increase engagement within their organization?  Some time-tested methods include the following:

• Develop great managers, they have a tremendous impact on their employee’s experience within your organization. Build a strong manager development program to ensure employees have great bosses.
• Managers need to schedule on-going career conversation with their employees. Statistics demonstrate that employees want to have career conversations with their boss; it shows the employee that someone at work encourages their development.

• Build a learning/development culture—one of the primary reasons employees leave a job is to gain career development. Building a learning culture demonstrates to employees that the organization cares about their personal development and that there are advancement opportunities for them within the organization.
• Allow greater flexibility in the work environment. In 2016, the Gallup survey measured that 43% of employees worked remotely in some capacity.  The findings demonstrated that engagement climbs when employees spend some time working remotely and some time working in a location with their co-workers.  The greatest return exists when employees maintain some balance:  working remotely most of the time but still getting face time with managers and co-workers.
• Prioritize and demonstrate diversity and inclusion at levels. If employees feel unwelcome they are less likely to care about their position.

For an organization to prioritize increasing employee engagement, it is important to develop an ongoing measurement of engagement. To better understand the specific tactics that will increase engagement within your organization, measure engagement through employee surveys to determine what works and doesn’t work at your organization.

WageWatch offers accurate, up-to-date HR metrics, benefit survey data, market compensation data, and salary reports that will allow you to stay current with the times. This information is highly beneficial in creating the best salary and benefits packages that meet or rival the industry standards. The PeerMark™ Wage Survey is a custom-built survey tool that allows individual survey participants to select their competitive set for comparison purposes.  Our experienced compensation consultants can assist with your organization’s compensation needs.  We can help you ensure internal equity and compliance with regulations as well as help structure your compensation programs to support your company’s business strategy and objectives.   For more information on our services, including consulting, salary survey data, benefit survey data and market compensation reports, please call WageWatch at 888-330-9243 or contact us online.

While 2018 ushered in some important changes at the federal level in labor and employment law such as:

• The Fair Labor Standards Act is amended to address tipped employees and tip ownership

• The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which impacts certain deductions and reporting provisions

• Regulatory interpretations from the NLRB which reversed course from its previous decisions

It saw its strongest “advocate” in the passing of new laws from the local and state arena.   What will be some of the continuing trends for 2019?

We believe employers should continue to prepare for the following trends:

• As marijuana use, both recreational and medicinal, become more widely accepted at state and local levels, look for more court’s and administrative interpretations with respect to zero tolerance drug policies

• Required sexual harassment training

• Increase in mandatory paid and unpaid time off including sick leave, military leave, and family leave

• Restrictions on salary history questions

• Cybersecurity requirements for the protection of employee data and employer procedures for dealing with breaches

Additionally, employers should keep their eye on minimum wage increases (both state and local) during 2019, “ban the box”, predictive scheduling and [at the federal level] the continued NLRB’s “reverse course” in the previous administration’s decisions as well as potential immigration policies.

Guest author:  Pautsch, Spognardi & Baiocchi Legal Group  (www.psb-attorneys.com)