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Doctor,
Are there any websites that could help me find information about motivating the employees at my machine shop?
Sincerely,
--Machine Shopper
Dear Machine Shopper:
Are there websites pertaining to motivation? Yes. Under Business & Economy on the YAHOO menu when I typed in "motivation," 206 sites were returned. Of those listed I found most information under Economics Press Business Information Center. There, you can find essays on various topics under Managing and Supervising, such as "Everything You Learned Is Wrong!"
Also if you read some of our ASK THE WORKPLACE DOCTOR answers to questions on motivation and related topics in our Q&A Archive, you may find some ideas of use to you with the employees at your machine shop. For example I have answered questions on motivating temporary workers, how to become a better motivator, and motivating a maintenance department.
Also you might find of interest the book United We Stand in which Thomas Weekley and Jay Wilber tell the story of how GM and the UAW came to form what they call the Quality Partnership. Early in this book on pages four and five, Jay Wilber tells of his first supervisory experience.
He was assigned the responsibility for 43 journey-person cutter/grinder employees and some that were still in training. He was warned that they were notorious for wasting time and that the situation was something he was to correct. Wilber said he handed a reprimand to three of the journeymen who seemed to be wasting the most time, and the next three days he saw all the cutter/grinder employees diligently at work yet very few kept their tools sharpened. He realized that there was a slowdown.
The slowdown was not resolved until he withdrew his reprimand and changed his tact by asking the workers to help him learn their jobs. Over the next three months, he spent time with each of those 43 skilled trades journey persons. And he said he learned first hand what teamwork meant and what it takes to do their work.
Motivation is linked to consequences. We do what pays off and we cease doing what that which results in no tangible rewards, no inner satisfaction, and things that may cause us pain. In your machine shop what are those tangible and intangible rewards and what causes pain?
If the rewards in your machine shop are in short supply, the pay unrewarding and inequitable, and if the jobs lack challenge and the workplace is one big bore in which workers long to leave for home and look forward to retirement, there will be more demotivation than motivation.
Such a workplace climate will not change overnight with some quick fix about how to motivate. Rather, a radical change will be required to generate constructive motivation--from the negative side that may arise out of fear of downsizing. And from the positive side, it may mean a genuine effort by management to encourage real opportunities for employees to organize their work and to have a say in managing their work. It is also important to share in the gains from taking on that responsibility.
Do tell me what you learn in the course of trying to find an answer to your question. Charles C. Abbott, former dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia, once warned, "If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know." His ironic observation of the way workplaces treat those not in the know illustrates what de-powers and depresses motivation.
WEGO means that each of us in a workplace wants to be part of something that makes us proud to work there, and that will motivate us.
--Bill Gorden