Work Culture Drives Performance
In a recent survey of over 20,000 workers around the world, analyzing 50 major companies, a single conclusion was made: Why we work determines how well we work and why we work is directly impacted by work culture.
In the 1980s professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester determined the six main reasons why people work. They are the following: play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia.
Can you guess which of these spur on better quality of work, higher motivation in employees, and overall satisfaction? If you guessed, play, purpose and potential, you guessed correctly.
Play is when you're motivated by the work because you enjoy it. Purpose is when the direct outcome of the work fits your identity. You work because you value the work’s impact. Potential is when the outcome of the work benefits your identity. In other words, the work enhances your potential. Here's an example from the airline industry:
Employees share the same terminals and use the same planes, but customer satisfaction differs widely across airlines. When the total motivation of employees of four major airlines was measured, their cultures compared with an outcome like customer satisfaction (as measured by the ACSI / University of Michigan), it was concluded that an organization’s culture (as measured by ToMo) predicted customer satisfaction.
Work cultures that inspire play, purpose, and potential, and do not engage emotional, economic pressure, or inertia as motivating factors, produced better customer outcomes. This rang true across different industries like retail, banking, telecommunications, and fast food. Most managers are unable to articulate what it means to have a high performing culture, let alone how to cultivate it. So what does culture mean?
"Culture is the set of processes in an organization that affects the total motivation of its people. In a high-performing culture, those processes maximize total motivation."
- Harvard Business Review
The truth is the total motivation, or ToMo, of workers is affected by multiple factors- this could be from how a job is designed to how performance is reviewed. However, there are three main factors that are most implicated for Total Motivation.
First, how a role is designed can indicate whether a worker feels propelled forward by their role, or if poorly designed, experiences lack of motivation.
Second, identity of an organization, which includes its mission and behavioral code is vitally important to ToMo.
Third, the career ladder in an organization. Places where employees are rated against each other increases emotional and economic pressure, which reduces total motivation and performance. The question you need to ask yourself is, how can you build ToMo in your culture?
“Senior leaders have the opportunity to create an award winning culture by investing in their managers so they can lead in motivating ways. For example, one study of bank branch managers showed that offering high-ToMo leadership training led to a 20% increase in credit card sales and a 47% increase in personal loan sales.”
- Harvard Business Review
The case can be made that the CEOs would do well to invest in culture consulting. In the meantime, these are a couple of ways to start improving the total motivation of employees.
Holding a reflection huddle with your team once a week.
Explaining the why behind the work of your team.
Considering how you’ve designed your team’s roles.
Creating a high performing culture is not easy to build. It takes discipline and time, and more often than not, support. Organizations that invest in creating healthy cultures are better to withstand the changes of our fast-paced, customer-centric, digital world.
If you need support, consider Culture Consulting.
