So much as been made of the changing workforce - from the retirement of Boomers to the narcissistic tendencies of Generation Y and all the challenges of motivating and rewarding a more diverse group of workers. These are facts and they will impact how you design and conduct programs and initiatives to guide behavior within your company and your distribution channel.
However, one area that hasn't received as much press - and probably has greater impact - is the shift from individual work to collaborative work.
I found some interesting statistics on collaboration on the blog AppGap - a blog focused on new technologies and the workforce of the future. The numbers come from the April 28th issue of Business Week.
In a nutshell...
- 82% of white-collar workers partner with co-workers
- 46% of white-collar workers are motivated to collaborate because they learn form others when they do so
- 30% collaborate to accomplish a specific task
- 19% collaborate because it is required of them and 4% to get ahead
- 51% of women like working together so that they can learn from others in comparison to 40% for men
- 18-24 year olds like working together the most (60%), followed by the 25-64 year olds (44%) and finally only 28% of the 65+ enjoy collaborating.
- 9% prefer working in groups of two, 54% like groups of three, 27% like groups of four or more and 10% are happiest working alone
Where does this lead me?
Incentive and recognition programs need to harness this trend and be structured in a way that takes advantage of the natural tendency of employees to collaborate to get things done. Team-based reward and recognition programs will drive greater performance than individual incentive programs. Given the tendencies these statistics indicate, it might be counterproductive to conduct individual programs in many situations.
But this is a tough row to hoe. For as long as I can remember incentive programs and recognition programs primarily focus on the individual. Sure there are some programs that provide "team recognition" but far and away the majority of the initiatives companies put in place are focused on individual goals and objectives.
This needs to change. I would suggest that we flip the equation and focus on having more programs that are team-based and less individually-based.
The problem is that we haven't invested in measurements and systems that focus on team performance. Until that happens we will default to the measurement system in place and continue to reward individuals. I'm not saying we shouldn't reward individual effort - simply that the preponderance of rewards and recognition need to move toward team efforts and team results.
Think through your business, look at how you make money, how you advance the company, how you get things done. I'm guessing in today's world individuals have less power to make that happen and teams are the driving force. Recognize it and do something about it.
Where do you start? Simple - ask a team.
Gather some folks together, tell them you think teamwork is the driving force behind success (I think they will agree) and ask them for the best way to measure team effort and team success. Use that input to create a measurement system. Then use that system to measure team performance. Create your programs around the new metrics.
The key is look at the reward program in a way that provides me with awards, you with awards and "us" with awards - but much more skewed to the "us" side of the equation.
