A new white paper from The Ken Blanchard Companies establishes the link between environmental work factors, employee perceptions, and subsequent intentions to act positively or negatively at work. The paper is the third in a series tracing Blanchard’s exploration into the factors that contribute to a passionate work environment and what leaders can do to influence that environment.
Entitled Employee Work Passion: Connecting the Dots the paper looks at how 12 environmental work factors influence five desired work intentions.
- Discretionary Effort—the extent to which the individual intends to expend his or her discretionary effort on behalf of the organization above and beyond agreed upon requirements
- Intent to Perform—the extent to which the individual intends to do his or her job well and work effectively to help the organization succeed
- Organizational Citizenship Behaviors—the extent to which the individual is committed to supporting fellow workers and behaving in ways that are respectful, considerate, and sensitive to others
- Employee Endorsement—the extent to which the individual readily endorses the organization to others as a good place to work and as a quality supplier of goods and services
- Intent to Remain—the extent to which the individual plans to stay with the organization
The paper also takes an in-depth look at the internal appraisal process employees use in determining whether a particular work environment positively or negatively impacts their sense of well-being. The paper highlights that perceptions are subjective and that employees each make sense of their environment personally based on what they experience and how they feel about it.
The paper reminds leaders and employers that employee engagement—or more specifically, employee work passion as Blanchard defines it, requires a multi-faceted approach at the job and organizational level. Leaders looking to encourage high levels of performance need to address all 12 factors identified in the paper, but at the same time recognize that people will react differently based on their internal perceptions.
You can download a copy of this new white paper through this link.
PS: Attending the ASTD international conference in Orlando, Florida this week? Stop by the Blanchard booth to pick up a copy in person and discuss the research with Blanchard authors! See Blanchard’s complete ASTD schedule here.
Thanks for a really fascinating article which goes beyond the realms of employee engagement.
Tony Moorcroft
http://www.coastconsulting.org.uk
David,
Thanks much for your white paper and its understanding. But ………
What executives and managers really need are simple, easy to execute methods to as you say “..create a motivating work environment and with the role of leadership in inspiring and maximizing the work passion and performance of others”.
I have created those methods and proven them “in the heat of battle” so to speak. They proved capable of turning extremely poorly performing workforces into highly motivated, highly committed, and fully engaged workforces with very high morale and innovation literally loving to come to work and at least 300% more productive than when I started. Stephen Covey wrote that the possible performance gain is 500% and I would agree with his assessment.
How? The essence is to fully meet the five basic needs all people have: to be heard, to be respected, and to have competence, autonomy, and relatedness, these last three being what motivates us all thanks to the research of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.
How? Very simple. Simply provide employees more than enough opportunity to voice their complaints, suggestions, and questions (solves the need to be heard) and respond to those to their satisfaction or better (solves their needs to be respected and to have competence, autonomy, and relatedness).
I admit that there are a bunch of details one being very important, that of converting most of the 95% of all people who are followers into being non-followers in order to stop the brain drain from following and making the workforce incapable of being led back to poor performance. But truly attempting to listen and respond to the employee’s satisfaction or better will cause leaders to confront most problems and discover most of the details.
Treating employees with the greatest respect constitutes the highest quality leadership and will lead employees to treat their work, their customers, each other, and their bosses with the greatest respect. Employees will be so thankful for having been treated far better than they could ever imagine that they will try their damnedest to unleash everything they have and more on their work just to repay management for treating them so well. Employees feeling this way don’t want to leave and are great spokesmen for their company.
I hope this helps.
Great info. Lucky me I found your website by chance (stumbleupon).
I have book-marked it for later!