8 factors influencing employee passion

A company's employees are the engine that propels it forward (or, in some unfortunate cases, leaves it coughing and sputtering by the side of the road).

I often describe the process of getting the most from those employees in a way that's a win for everyone involved as tuning the engine. The potential is there. The question is, how do you maximize the employees' experience and energy for their work? It's definitely not going to come from management cheerleading. At best that's short-lived; at worst it's a Dilbert cartoon.

So where does employee passion come from? The Ken Blanchard Company has some ideas. After survey 25,000 employees from around the world, the company identified eight major factors influencing employee passion:

• Meaningful work—Employees perceive the organization’s larger purpose through products or services produced, consider their work to be worthwhile, and are proud of their individual actions and contributions that help the organization serve its customer.
• Collaboration—Employees perceive an organizational environment and culture that enhances collaboration, cooperation, and encouragement between all organizational members.
• Fairness—Employees perceive an environment where pay, benefits, resources and workload are fair and balanced and equitable, people treat each other with respect, and leaders act in an ethical manner.
• Autonomy—Employees perceive an environment where people have the tools, training, support, and authority to make decisions.
• Recognition—Employees perceive an environment where they are praised, recognized, and appreciated by colleagues and their leader for their accomplishments, where they receive monetary compensation for those accomplishments, and where they are contributing to positive relationships with others.
• Growth—Employees perceive an environment where people have opportunities to learn, grow professionally, and develop skills that lead to advancement and career growth.
• Connectedness with leader—Employees perceive an environment where they trust their leader and where the leader makes an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.
• Connectedness with Colleagues—Employees perceive an environment where they trust their colleagues and where their colleagues make an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.

How about you? Does that match your experience? Are there any other factors you see as important?

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

Comments

[Barbara Saunders]

I think this underestimates the importance of alignment between the organization's core values and the worker's. I attended elite secondary and post-secondary schools. Then, I spent much of my early career delivering direct service in nonprofit, social service agencies. In those roles, my main contacts were with clients, so I worked to standards I created for myself. After that, I spent several years in the corporate world. Recently, as an administrative worker in a nonprofit, I've realized that I don't fit well outside of that "excellence" culture. In some of the environments I've been in recently, I feel that people ARE recognized, but the recognition system does not align with mine. Being praised for "effort" doesn't give me satisfaction, and actual achievement isn't what gets recognized. It's a real culture shock!

[Curt Rosengren]

Excellent point, Barbara. As with so many things, the individual perspective is key.

This list provides a good starting point - i.e., from a broad perspective, what are the important factors?

But as you point out, a broad-brush view is inevitably going to miss the finer points.

So riffing off this idea, the question then is, how do you fine-tune that broad-brush view? Simple. Ask.

Using your example, the relevant question to ask oneself might not be, "Is there recognition," but, "What gets recognized?" Does it align with what I actually care about?

For a manager, the relevant question to ask current employees or potential hires might be, "What kind of recognition motivates you?" (Or it might be a variety of questions with the intent of building a picture of that.)

A big-picture framework doesn't mean all the granular details are taken care of. It's like building a house with a sound structure, and then doing the finishing details to give it that personal touch.