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Tips for Motivating IT Workers?
RexCelestis asks: "I work for a small (35 employees) tech company that provides consulting and software to law firms of all sizes. Last year, our company moved from rewards based on the fulfillment of personal goals to a more general reward, based almost strictly on sales. Outside of the sales staff, very few of us have felt motivated by this plan. As we near the annual meeting, I'd like to offer a few alternative methods to help motivate employees outside of sales. Can anyone offer any suggestions to help drive a development team, support staff, and/or consulting group towards greater success?"
How about sending polls to your customers regarding their satisfaction? I know it's not the best idea; they probably don't give enough of a damn to fill out a survey.
... and wasn't it the consensus that the best motivators were beer and pornography?
Specifically, Adderall.
After all, I am strangely colored.
character in 'Torn Curtain', Hitchcock is reported to have replied,
"Your motivation, Mr Newman, is the $250,000 you're being paid."
You really have to look at two factors here:
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
It's not that they're lazy, it's that they just don't care....
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
How about you give them all a Christmas bonus based on sales.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Can anyone offer any suggestions to help drive a development team, support staff, and/or consulting group towards greater success?
* Hawaiian Shirt Day
* Red Swingline staplers[1]
* Music played at a reasonable volume.[2]
* Some kind of a stock option equity sharing program.[3]
* And of course, lots of followup regarding TPS Reports.
[1] Management only.
[2] From 9 to 11.
[3] This is hypothetical.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Some firms like to provide free chair massages to their technical staff, particularly the ones who work the support lines. Take your company to the next level - include a "happy ending" with each massage.
After all your clients are the real whores, you need to balance out the corporate karma and employ the kind of whores that actually make people happy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
My biggest concern is that the current system rewards expansion, potientially at the expense of maintaining both the products and the relationships with the customer.
A happy customer can sometimes inform potiential customers about your service. Likewise, a dissatisfied customer may be more trouble than any software problem you could ever have.
Therefore, at the very least, maintaining relations should be considered on par with selling. Meaning that the support staff is just as important.
Furthermore, maintaining relations also includes those people that may never see the customers. Developers are cruicial here. If they do a bad job, everyone else is either selling shit or having to spend resources and good will to maintain it.
This is much like a waiter being the only one who gets a tip when the chef prepared the meal. Not a good way to motivate people (and may have the opposite effect of critical people feeling under appriciated).
Then again, I'm just a 21 year old CS student... What do I know about the business world?
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Donuts, and the promise of more donuts in the future.
That's all it takes, I swear!
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
You might check with Dr. Kersten and his company http://despair.com/ -- he has lots of suggestions. Your conference room might benefit from a few of these lithographs.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
As someone who has done military training in leadership and motivation, let me tell you that I have found most traditional management "motivation" strategies to be quite flawed. Permit me to elaborate with suggestions for improvement:
Accomplishment/Completion bonuses/prizes/etc:
Not a bad idea, but more designed to be coupled with something else. Continue reading for suggestions.
Performance evaluations:
You have to be careful with these. Most workers hate knowing that their performace is being evaluated constantly. These are most effective when the environment is positive. Eliminate the negative focus and focus more on positivity and learning.
Take for example, if a small part of a project was scrapped 2 days in due to the worker finding it too difficult or not-feasible. Instead of wrapping your head around why they wasted 2 days of company time on something impossible, focus on what they may have learned from what they worked on, and if any of their new knowledge may further the rest of the project in any way.
Be sure that evaluations are done in a relaxing environment. Offer coffee and donuts or other light fare, keep the door open, and seat them in a comfy chair. It goes a long way - and that's experience talking. If they've had outstanding performance, then consider offering a prize/bonus (nothing too expensive/elaborate though).
Effort rewards:
These are used synonymously with performance evaluations. These don't have to be anything too significant, and can be given to a team as a whole. If the team has shown some good performance for the past week or so, take them all out to dinner at some place nice but casual (optional: pool-tables, karaoke or other games may help enhance the fun). Tell them to leave their PDA's and laptops at home, and come just to relax and have a good time. This quite often raises team spirit and can also raise their respect for management. If you feel that an individual deserves a reward, give it to them privately, and make sure it isn't worth too much bragging about.
One-on-One:
Much like a performance evaluation, but different. Instead of monitoring individual performance, only monitor team performance. With a One-on-One, you speak to each team member individually, and have them report to you on how they think they are doing. With this, they can set their own goals, and put plans in place that fit with them, which eases their levels of stress. As with a performance eval, keep the environment relaxed and follow the guidelines mentioned in for performance evaluations.
General tactics:
Here are some general leadership and motivation tactics to help out:
* Don't assign impossible tasks. As well, don't assign a task and then change it without due reason. Undue changes will cause your workers to lose confidence in your abilities.
* Comfort counts. If during the summer months your workers are constantly overheating, spend the money to get each of them a desk-sized oscillating fan and offer them cold drinks periodically. During winter months, offer them coffee to warm them up from the cold. Minimal expendadures such as those can do wonders to raise productivity.
* Keep yourself motivated. An unmotivated leader will demoralize everyone.
* If someone is in a slump, work with them to get them back on track. Maybe they just need a talking to, in which you should remind them of their past successes. Perhaps they need a little time off. Being treated well and like a human being will garner a sense of loyalty. Nothing can be more valuable to a company than a loyal worker.
Good luck. If you need any more tips, feel free to email me.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Profit sharing would be more effective because it motivates on both the cost and the revenue side of things. If the team feels like it can't directly contribute to improving sales (revenue), then perhaps they will be motivated to reduce costs. In order for this to work, the company cannot use a command-and-control method of management. Individuals must be given leeway to independently take action to make improvements. If these two things aren't in place then it will all just lead to apathy and cynicism. I suggest checking out lean software development and agile software development resources. My sig contains a good starting point, but it is more management oriented. I also have a couple of articles about metrics in particular. This article about metrics is good.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You want your people to work harder? Make them:
1. understand how what they are doing impacts things
2. give them projects that they enjoy
3. encourage them to make their own projects
4. set aside money to encourage things:
"steve, I wanted to let you know we appreciated you staying late and working on x last week, so we put $300 extra in your paycheck"
5. have them interact w/ people outside of dev. If your developers interact with customers they understand how what they're doing impacts things and they get to see the rewards of people being satisfied by their good work.
Oh, and say "Thank you".... a lot.
6. Lastly: Ask them what you could to to make their job better and more productive.
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
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At least one study has shown that providing increased monetary rewards will encourage staff to become money-hungry.
Motivation often works best when you can provide varied rewards. It is quite natural to receive a $1000 bonus one year, and think "Great!" and then receive another $1000 the following year and think "So I didn't improve at all?" even though your actual salary may have improved. And of course it's even worse if the second year bonus is $700...
Sales staff are often in the game because they are money driven, or have been trained to be, and this can be a problem when the company is being run by one, because they will often find it difficult to understand that other people might actually like to (e.g.) spend 1-2 hours a week working on free software, or have better coffee in the office, or have the office provide lunches, or childcare, or parking, or table-tennis.
I doubt if there's an easy answer for you. Are the rewards legitimately shared, or is it desirable to conspicuously reward some people over others? That can also be dangerous and demotivating for the less recognised (who are also not necessarily less-deserving).
I hope this gives you some food for thought, but I unfortunately doubt that you will get any real help from slashdot. Witness the clueless money-grubbing turkey who currently has top mod points on this thread :-(
Maybe read some respected motivational theories, starting with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, then Herzberg's theory of Motivators and Hygienes and moving on through Carl Rogers' stuff (hopefully fairly quickly)... and so on. There is good understanding to be gleaned from all of these.
Good luck!
Really big whips.
Charles
-- Violence is the first refuge of idiots.
"Managing programmers is like herding cats", so think "cats":
Also have a look at Googles way of motivating their "cats".
Tux2000
Denken hilft.
Get this book.
My advice to you is to quit whining and do they job you agreed to do when you were hired for the amount of money you were promised.
This is what you're saying: "I'm paid a salary for my job, but really the salary is just to get me to come in every day and browse the net. If they want me to actually work, they're going to have to sweeten the deal." Blah on that.
or else!
The last place I worked at had a bonus scheme, the only problem was that performance levels were set impossibly high and the resulting bonus worked out at about 5% of your pay. I finally realized that it wasn't worth the stress, gray hair and ulcers so I just did my job and didn't bother busting a gut for little reward.
Here's a hint, if you want to setup a bonus scheme then ask your staff what they want as rewards.
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
As Joel said it : Incentive Pay Considered Harmful
IMO the most important thing is lack of frustration, and meaningful work. Coders will self-motivate if they can strive with sufficient resources and without unreasonable interruption towards a project whose design they understand and whose output they expect to be used. Perks are nowhere near as important. Therefore, hire a really good project manager.
A manager has two ears and one mouth, he should be using them in that ratio (2:1).
Listen to your staff, ask them for ideas which cost between some min and max price to implement, review the ideas, and then make some of them happen!
Simple ideas:
Allow them to choose their workstation -- some will stick with Windows, some will want Apple, some Linux. As long as they can work in comfort, they will be happier.
Provide simple refreshments -- coffee, fruit juice, water, and maybe a few beers on a Friday .
If there is a scheme to help the employees purchase computers, bicycles through the company with tax breaks to reduce the price (as in the UK) ensure the employees know about it, and get them using the scheme.
Unless there is an absolute need to be present in the office, let the staff work from home periodically. Not having to commute on sweaty, late and crowded trains to work means we can even do a little more each day as we simply connect from home, and avoid all the time taken to commute.
There are lots more, but overall they all boil down to one simple point: treat your staff well, and they will work harder in return.
Say hello to your employees every morning, individually, greeting them by their name. Take fifteen minutes and walk the cube farm, stopping at each employee's cube. Say hello. Banter for a moment. Do not discuss work in these rounds unless it is an emergency; it will spoil the effect.
When an employee does well, recognise this. You don't have to give them anything physical, but a public "thank you" at the next departmental meeting can be very valueable, especially if your boss is there.
Don't do stupid shit. For example, if you've been providing broadband to people's homes to enable working remotely, don't cut it off while still spending $$$ on conference calls. It pisses people off. If you need to cut (hey, it happens), cut evenly.
Provide your employees with some space to socialise, and don't prevent them from doing so. It makes the workplace more bearable.
Offer to take employees to lunch once in a while. Don't make it a CLM if they decline.
Greet new employees with a welcome luncheon. Send off departing employees with a farewell luncheon. It gives everyone a chance to say hello and goodbye.
Don't hold meetings unless they are needed and productive. Nothing kills morale like wasting time in a meeting where nothing pertains to you.
Find a way to dispatch your employees' complaints efficiently, effectively, and reasonably. If it is something you can't do anything about, at least give the employee a sympathetic ear.
Go to bat for your people.
www.wavefront-av.com
It sounds like they were motivated until you took away their bonuses. You'll never get them back to that level with donuts, occasional free beer, casual Fridays, leftover marketing swag, etc. Even bringing back their original bonus plan won't undo the damage you've already inflicted on moral. In your next company, don't do that. It's cheaper in the long run to pay bonuses to your core people even when times are bad. How can you fix the current situation? You need to make the developers and other techies feel like they in some way matter to the company. Ask them questions, listen to their answers (and questions), and try to do something -- anything -- based on their input. If 3 people want Diet Sprite in the vending machine, put it in. They'll feel important. Make the salesguys, who I assume aren't making their targets, come up with a couple features they need in order to close sales. Even if they're BS, at least the developers won't feel helpless as the company goes down the crapper.
OK, I was just using sex to advertise my less-than-sexy post.
.002 * 50,000,000 = $100,000. A 10% commission on $100,000 = $10,000. Obviously there would be additional costs and savings to calculate, such as cost of converting to larger carriers, savings by having to change rolls less frequently, etc.
There are two ways of improving the bottom line. The most obvious is to increase sales. The second is to reduce costs. Unless you are directly involved in sales, it is difficult to influence sales, and even harder to convince management to pay you a commission for those sales. On the other hand, anyone can reduce costs through improving the operational efficiency of the company. So, how does a company reward cost reduction? Just as with sales, they pay a commission for cost reduction.
My first real job was working as a tool designer at Boeing. They had an Employee Suggestion program that allowed anyone to submit a suggestion for saving the company money. The suggestor had to include a basic ROI with the suggestion. Management evaluated the suggestion and if it could be implemented, the suggestor received 10% of the savings. I had a nice little revenue stream from submitting suggestions, many of which had to do with creating custom macros for our CAD system. In a nut shell, I got a "commission" for improving Boeing's bottom line.
One of the fringe benefits of this program was that employees were constantly analyzing every aspect of every business process, looking for opportunities to improve efficiency, even if it wasn't in their core area of expertise. One guy won big for submitting a suggestion that the company switch from standard toilet paper rolls to giant rolls. Seems kind of stupid, but when you have 100,000 people wiping their asses 250 days a year, it adds up. Estimate: 2 feet of toilet paper per employee per day = 50,000,000 million feet per year. Cost per foot for standard roll = $.010 Cost per foot for giant roll = $.008 Savings per year =
Employee suggestion programs are generally viewed as cheap management tricks, but if they have a financial kick to them, they can be effective tools for rewarding employees. If they are pitched as commission for non-sales employees, they will have a better chance of taking off.
"Provide your employees with some space to socialise, and don't prevent them from doing so. It makes the workplace more bearable."
Why? Isn't their enough "love" in your job to make it "bearable"?
"Don't do stupid shit. For example, if you've been providing broadband to people's homes to enable working remotely, don't cut it off while still spending $$$ on conference calls. It pisses people off. If you need to cut (hey, it happens), cut evenly."
If they're cutting broadband that's needed for work, then that means your job may be next.
One of the best explanations of how employee motivation occurs is the Harvard Business Journal's "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?" Unfortunately, it doesn't specifically say how to motivate IT workers, but it gives you a plan on how to determine what changes will create long term motivation instead of making them look for the next bonus or perk.
/ en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=388X
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02
I would also recommend "Rapid Development" by Steve McConnell. It covers a lot of topics, but it recommends a lot of books and articles, which is how I found out about the HBR article above.
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/770.asp
You got 3 options, first there's donuts:
Mr. Scorpio says productivity is up two percent, and it's all because of
my motivational techniques! Like, donuts. And a possibility of more
donuts to come.
Two, asking nicely:
Hank: I'm gonna leave everything to you. We're on a tight schedule. You keep them motivated.
Homer: [to staff] Are you guys working?
Man 1: Yes, sir, Mr. Simpson. [typing]
Homer: Could you, um... work any harder than this?
Man 2: Sure thing, boss! [typing faster]
Homer: Hey, call me Homer.
When all else fails, try hammocks.
Homer: Sir, I need to know where I can get some business hammocks.
Hank: Hammocks? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that? Hammocks! Homer, there's four places. There's the Hammock Hut, that's on third.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Hank: There's Hammocks-R-Us, that's on third too. You got Put-Your-Butt-There?
Homer: Mm-Hmm.
Hank: That's on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the hammock complex on third.
Homer: Oh, the hammock district.
Hank: Back to the hammocks, my friend. You know, there's a little place called Mary Ann's Hammocks. The nice thing about that place is Mary Ann gets in the hammock with you. [laughs] I'm just kidding.
Homer: Oh.
Hank: You know who invented the hammock, Homer?
Homer: No.
Hank: That's something for you to do. Find that out.
Used to take us to a football game each year. One year, they had to fly us to an away game, cause they couldn't get home tickets.
Other company outings were, trip downtown to the theatre, a ski trip, etc.
In summary, anytime you take the company out and buy drinks and dinner, it is a motivating factor.
It is the season, take the whole company, including significant others, out to dinner at a fancy place.
The best technical people aren't motivated by the same things as salesmen and managers. Sales people (in general) can use their personality and people skills to win money. The eye is on the money and the skills develop to support that. That is fine, business needs that. However, managers tend to reflect owners desire for the business to make money and apply incentives like everyone were salesmen. Managers (in general) are eye on the money/budget with business skills. (before I get blasted for this - yes, I know there are other incentives for each job, have done each and enjoyed the other benefits - doesn't change the needed business focus)
No salesman would *EVER* invest the time and effort to develop the skills of a techie for just the money. No one would twist their brain that badly just for the pay that techs get.
The best technical people don't give a crap about money beyond a point. As a technical person, I need enough money to support my family, have a cool (note that word) house, eat well, provide my toys, and make me feel appreciated. I personally have grown to hate bonuses because they feel too much like putting a price on my pride. I dump heart and soul into something just to have someone that doesn't know squat about what genius I invested say "here's $5, that thing you created is sure nice". I might as well have my wife say "I had a great time tonight dear, here's $10 - if you can do even better next week, I might give you $15..." You want to give me more money? Great! Don't quantify my work with it.
You want to give me something that means more? Give me something that isn't quantified. Ease the pain of my addiction to technology. Give me something that makes it up to my wife and kids that they lose me in thought to figuring out a sticky algorithm at the dinner table. Give me time off with them. Give me toys that will amuse me with something other than work. Give me something to do with the arts or food or travel. Something that gets me out of my rut so I can come back and freshly jump back into it with vigor.
I love my work, am addicted to it and would do it even if I didn't have to get paid for it.
(notes - 1:not the same as if I wasn't paid for it 2:I wouldn't do it for free for you but I sure would for open source or for myself)
Don't saddle me with crap that doesn't give me the buzz that I get from my tech stuff. I'm not here to wheel and deal, piss testosterone, compete for leader of the pack, meet deadlines, conquer the world and play political games. I want to create, show off, see cool stuff and work with other people that understand that. I want immediate gratification from my work - to see my stuff do what I told it to. I want the end user to squeal with delight like a little kid when they see that my work just did more than they expected. I want my peers to say "that is so cool! how did you do that?" I want see stuff that my peers do that blow my mind and give me ideas.
All that being said and having been a manager, the best things IMHO that you can do to motivate your tech employees is...
It takes a few simple tricks to make a top motivated company.
s iness1.php
1) Make them owners. Pay them partly with shares.
2) Pay everybody the same cash amount.
3) Let them chose there own management.
http://www.thenewagesite.com/jjdewey/molecular/bu
David Brent is your hero. Follow his examples for the best in motivational leadership.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Drive me to Fry's this afternoon? I need to pick up x y & z. Mileage plus a time out.
Chased away sales and marketing slime when there was a problem, sometimes took them away so we could fix things, rudely if required.
You've been really busy, take Friday afternoon off if you're all caught up.
This is our budget for repairs and misc. Everyone gets $Dollars to upgrade their worksstation. Do your shopping and I'll sign the PO.
Back when I was a team leader, the best motivator I found was either 1)Cookies, or 2)M&Ms!!
No, I'm serious....
Depending on which the developer liked
If a developer did something cool, or busted his (or her - yes we had some female type programmers) butt, or anything else that was "above the bar", that afternoon, around 2pm (after lunch) - I would walk over to their cube, with a tray - with a cup of coffee form them, and a snack - and a little hand written "Thanks" note. The company supplied the coffee, and the cookie/snack came out of my pocket money. And you made sure that his/her co-workers SAW you deliver the snack
In out little area - it soon became an M&M standard - if you found a package on your chair - you knew that someone was saying "Good work - thank you"
It's amazing what folks will do for a cookie or package of M&Ms - or maybe it was the regularly occuring fact that the team leads would recognize the work, it a quiet, but still public way
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
just threaten to fire the bastards
Just ask management to show up to meetings with Chinese or Indian white papers. You know the ones that say productivity over there is high (that is something I never understood, USA workers are the MOST productive workers in the word, but if you move you JOB to India you job productivity INCREASES). OK go figure