More and more often I discover, either in studies or magazines, articles and interventions regarding the importance of having motivated employees that are passionate about their work and the way in which this can be measured.
I rarely encountered any opinions on the way you can differentiate between the concept of being passionate about your work and what it means to be a workaholic. Or, even more challenging, how to reduce this addiction while at the same time maintaining productivity and motivation.
The first step would be to clearly define what the term commitment means. When it comes to it, it's highly likely that you will find 10 studies that have ten different explanations about what it means to have passionate and motivated employees. In a research about the impact of leadership in organizations, conducted over several years by the Ken Blanchard Companies, certain concepts regarding employees started to emerge: commitment, motivation and morale.
The authors of this study believe that all these terms define separate dimensions that could be linked to a broader concept, a concept that hadn't been identified at that certain time by the experts in this field, Employee passion.
The Ken Blanchard Companies' specialists found that this concept is made out of three distinct components: an emotional component, that can be measured by analyzing the feelings employees have towards the workplace, a cognitive component which represents the logical conclusions of every employee regarding the workplace and a behavioral component that can be measured with the help of statistics such as employee turnover, degree of absenteeism and performance.
Through a more in-depth view they found 8 factors that seem to have a high influence on Employee passion:
• having a goal employees perceive the organization's mission statement through the products and services offered, they consider their contribution useful, they are proud that through their work they help the company
• collaboration employees perceive a work environment and company culture that fosters collaboration and cooperation
• fairness employees perceive a work environment where rewards, benefits, resources and responsibility are balanced and just, people are treated with respect and leaders act in an ethical manner
• autonomy employees perceive a work environment where they have the tools, training and support necessary in order to achieve their objectives
• appreciation employees perceive a work environment where they are praised, appreciated or encouraged by managers and colleagues for their achievements, they are financially rewarded for those accomplishments and they feel responsible with regards to contributing to the positive atmosphere within the company
• development the employees perceive a work environment that gives them the opportunity to learn and develop professionally
• direct manager relations the employees perceive a work environment that is favorable towards a trust based relation with the direct manager and a place where the managers make an effort to maintain an interpersonal relation with every employee
• colleague relations the employees perceive a work environment where they can trust their co-workers and where everybody makes an effort to maintain a high degree of quality when it comes to interpersonal relations
As I mentioned before, it's about employee perceptions regarding the workplace. This means that they won't always appreciate what can be found in reality. It's very possible to discover that your employees don't have a high degree of appreciation towards some efforts as managers do or that they don't see the efforts that are being taken in a certain direction (perhaps sometimes the idea hasn't even been sold to them).
We are talking about perceptions and the most important thing we have to do is link them in a system that shows how employees see the effort managers undertake ( we are talking about the times when managers really do this and not those actions that have to be done because they have to be done) or how they see their workplace.
Another interesting conclusion of this research study is that it wasn't possible to establish a hierarchy of these eight factors and this means that you need all of them when you talk about Employee passion. Even more, this means that if you want to have a lot more than just a high level of commitment, motivation and morale on behalf of the employees you need to start thinking how you can work with those 8 dimensions I mentioned above.
For those that want to make a quick research about how passionate their employees are, here's 5 statements that you must ask your employees to answer, the degree to which they take place in their team or in the organization:
1. Am I motivated, enthusiastic and passionate about what I do
2. Am I motivated, enthusiastic and passionate about the company I work for
3. Do I make an extra effort or do I commit extra energy without being
specifically asked
4. Do I intend to stay in the company as long as possible
5. Do I recommend this company to other people as being an extraordinary
place to work in
At this moment any manager might say that he couldn't get a maximum score from his employees because Romanian culture is based on a If I go down I'll take you with me attitude, this meaning that there will never be enough reasons for an employee to be happy. Those who think this is true can stop reading this article and consider the notion of Employee passion as being just another one of the many theoretical ideas in management.
On the other hand, those who consider this attitude as being a small bump on the road to building a powerful team, have my full appreciation. I think it's time to get rid of this fatalistic Miorita style approach (this is how it's going to be and that's that) regarding employee attitude and start asking ourselves how we can change it, how we can help them see things differently. Employee passion is not just their responsibility, it also depends on a healthy and open relationship between manager and employee.
All of the 8 factors largely depend on how we, as managers, keep our promises. And in an organization where employee attitude is defensive and based on distrust, I always look at the way in which managers do what they said they would do and the way in which they can represent a source of inspiration and development for their employees.
Rares Manolescu
Senior Manager
