Many organizations, big and small companies, think about what kind of the motivation system to choose. What will make their employees motivated at work, what will ensure development of their company, what will integrate the employees with the goals and tasks. First, all the employees choose “hard motivators” that influence their income. It is good in the short-run, but there is no effect over a long or medium period. Furthermore, an employee who works for a company longer and understands how it operates, knows its position in the market, its capabilities and threats from competitors, becomes more valuable to each company. Unfortunately there are certain restrictions on increasing an employee’s income. On one hand, taxes and other contributions imposed on a salary make the company spend more than twice as much as he gets net. On the other hand, such a change is effective for up to 6 months on people’s motivation and often it results in the necessity of increasing remuneration for a whole group of people or may lead to frustration on the part of other staff. Moreover, it is the most expensive motivator.
According to research done among employees, income is not the most important element of motivation that engages them in their tasks. Very often these are elements of relations between employer/company – employee and/or employee – employee. In this regard there are a number of systems leading to changes in attitudes in order to build an efficient team.
Let us mention a few trendy examples from previous years:
- training – how much did your company spend on training per person last year?
- Integration trips – how much did your company spend on integration trips per person last year?
- Health protection – how much does your company spend for private treatment of employees, etc.
These are obviously not small amounts – but haven’t we forgotten about something? Our best people thanks to whom THIS COMPANY develops so well work 8 hour or more per day, which gives 42 hours per week and over 2,100 hours per year in an office.
How much did you spend to make their work easier, more comfortable and healthier? The answer would be: “as much as we could” or “as much as we had in our budget”, but it won’t be the correct answer …
The furnishing used by the employee are most often the chair, desk, container and cupboard.
Let us analyze the following example:
The set mentioned above should be used on average for 10 years, but we “amortize” it after 5 years.
Variant A
Let us assume that its average price was 2,500 PLN, which means a monthly expense of 41 PLN per employee. It surely wasn’t the best set, the chair has only basic function, while the desk does not have height adjustment and container and cupboard cannot be leveled.
Variant B
We spend more on a chair (better mechanisms) plus 350 PLN and a desk with height adjustment (often in the same price) plus 250 PLN, the rest without any changes.
The monthly expense increases to 51 PLN, or plus 10 PLN.
Variant C
We spend 1,200 PLN more for a whole work-place by changing its furnishing from the chair to the cupboard.
The monthly expense is 61 PLN, or plus 20 PLN.
Variant D
We choose a desk allowing working in a sitting and standing position – electric height adjustment plus a comfortable chair and other furnishing of higher quality. The value of the work-place increases up to 6.000 PLN.
The monthly expenses is now 100 PLN (plus 59 PLN) within 5 years of usage (such a set should used at least 12-15 years).
As you can see an increase in monthly expenses was higher, but was it really? How much do you spend on motivation systems per year and how much do we get? Here are the examples:
- Salary increase – ? – biggest effect within up to 6 months
- Training - ? – biggest effect within up to 6 months
- Health protection system - ? – biggest effect – permanently
- Integration trip - ? – biggest effect within up to 3 months
- Expense for healthy working conditions – from 10 to 61 PLN – biggest effect - permanently.
If we put values depending on a company, then the expenses in item 5 will be surely the lowest, but with a permanent effect it will turn out to be the most effective. If we compared them to the salary increase, there is no doubt that a rise from 7 to 42 PLN (after deduction of contributions and taxes) per month, would not be even noticed and would not be any motivator. But change in the standard of the work-place where an employee spends most of his time, has an impact on his involvement, motivation and eagerness to work every day. Now we can see that any motivation system is not used without taking into consideration other aspects, but do we really pay attention to the everyday conditions under which our people work and how we care about them?
This is only a part of the argument that we would like you to know.
Please read also other articles: health – expense or investment and the company’s office and health. |
