Get your staff motivated

Motivating and driving your employees can be as much to do with psychology as a juicy salary. Marc Barber reports

Walking around an office can be a deflating experience for a CEO – watching as employees surf the web, talk about sport or discuss the latest twists in last night’s soap.
Besides, when you’re concentrating on growing a business, it can seem indulgent to cheer people on for carrying out the tasks you are paying them to do.

That sort of attitude can be a mistake as it’s the role of a leader to pep up and spur on staff from time to time. It’s equally important to pay attention to the real performers in a company, the ones who deliver the goods who may not feel appropriately challenged, appreciated or rewarded for their efforts.

Neville Upton, CEO of The Listening Company, which provides outsourced call centre and marketing services, has appointed former rugby world cup winner and retired Wasps captain Lawrence Dallaglio as the company’s director of motivation.

‘This is a man who was consistently at the top of his game, possessed a never-say-die attitude and always took responsibility. We thought his presence would have a beneficial effect on the company and it has done. He walks down the calling floor and you can see results improving.’

Andy Philpot, a marketing director for performance consultancy Capital Incentives & Motivation, observes that a leader should try to assess the factors that drive engagement. ‘Ask how much an employee feels involved in the business,’ he says. ‘Do they feel they can play a part in the business and are they important to the employer?’

It’s important to treat employees the same as customers, claims Philpot. ‘Businesses will really try to understand customers and what motivates them. Employees require a similar degree of attention as they will be inspired differently.’

Challenging times
At mortgage brokerage Freedom Finance, keeping up the morale of employees has taken no small amount of application. Managing director Richard Beaumont says: ‘We conducted a large piece of work in May last year on how we needed to improve the business; the credit crunch came when we were concluding that piece of work. So between November to January, we implemented the restructuring and we lost around 60 people.’

In February, another round of restructuring was undertaken ‘as it became clear that even our worst case assumptions on sub-prime mortgages were optimistic’. The company now has around 200 staff and the challenge for Beaumont and his managers is to stop a defeatist attitude settling over the workforce.

‘Anybody would be saying: “Well, it’s only going to be a matter of time before the next redundancies, so should I look at something else?” When you’re operating in this part of the financial markets, even if your workforce is 100 per cent motivated and your processes are working, you’re still on a downward slope because of the market conditions. You’re fighting to keep your head above water and it’s going to be like this until things recover, which they will.’

At The Listening Company, there’s a challenge of a different kind as the business is performing strongly. Says Upton: ‘We are currently reengineering our sales process. The sales team used to do everything – they would own the leads, do the proposals and try to win new business.

‘This is being altered so the marketing team write the solution for a particular client need, while sales are responsible for bringing in the leads and project managing the opportunity.’

If this restructuring is conducted in a ham-fisted manner, it could quickly alienate staff. ‘You have to change the mindset of people,’ says Upton. ‘We’ve recruited new people into marketing and given the marketing director a new set of responsibilities. It’s involved changing everyone’s job description and their incentive schemes.’

For Upton, it’s been essential to impress upon staff that the reforms are necessary as the company has grown, rather than impose changes in an arbitrary, dictatorial manner.
‘You have to make sure they are on board with you and have bought into it,’ he notes. ‘I think what we are doing recognises that our solutions are getting so sophisticated that it’s now too much for one salesperson.

‘It’s not possible to devise a customer solution, a proposal, build a relationship and do the project management effectively. What people are looking for nowadays is more complicated, so you need two or three different brains looking at it.’

Military training
At Freedom, Beaumont has drawn on his 14 years as a major in the Royal Engineers to ramp up staff enthusiasm and the importance of taking on responsibilities. ‘In the army there is a success or fail approach. If something doesn’t work, then you have to just fix it. There’s no grey area and that’s the kind of culture you want to instil,’ he says.

Beaumont has taken staff to the military training school at Sandhurst, where they have been inducted into the ‘mission command’ style of leadership adopted by the army. ‘Mission command is about setting out the environment you work in and looking at the options available. It’s not simply about following orders, but making choices and having the confidence to act on them.’

The trips to Sandhurst, in conjunction with other training, has led to marked improvements, says Beaumont. He arrived at the company in March 2007 and admits that he does ‘get a kick out of seeing the results’. For him, the real secret to any training or motivational course is to ensure staff are putting what they’ve learnt into practice. ‘The only way you make what you’ve been taught useful is by doing it.’

While empowering staff is important, he notes there needs to be team and operational meetings ‘so things don’t run away from themselves’. He adds: ‘There won’t be another restructuring, but if people feel worried and they don’t feel like they have ownership about what they’re doing – if they just do their job and go home – that’s a very difficult environment to be in. People want to go to work and believe they can make a difference, not only to themselves, but the company as a whole.’

Energy levels
At Cabot Financial, which specialises in purchasing debt, the company has made
an extra effort to keep staff engaged. HR director John McCluskey says: ‘One of the mistakes people make with motivation is they do it at the wrong time. If you’re in retail and it’s Christmas, there probably isn’t much point in trying to energise staff as customers will be pouring through the doors.

‘You want to motivate on a wet Wednesday the month before or when people are down. Staff think about leaving when they’re sitting around bored. The majority of people say they’re at their best when they’re busy. Our ethos here is to fill those energy gaps – when someone is a bit down, cheer them up and give them something to do.’

Sections of the call centre are divided into teams, which are named after super cars. The team leaders at Cabot, which has just under 400 staff, have access to money for entertainment and gifts and there are also recreation areas where activities and games can be played.

‘One team will challenge another team for an hour,’ says McCluskey. ‘The team that hits the target may get ten minutes off to play Jenga.’

There are also games consoles for staff to play and competitions that relate to sporting events, such as the Olympics or Wimbledon. ‘I don’t want to make it seem like this is just a fun place to work,’ insists McCluskey. ‘It’s a balance between having fun and working hard.’

Call centres are well known for being monotonous to work in. The techniques used by Cabot are designed to keep lethargy at bay. Moreover, strict key performance indicators mean this is not merely an altruistic exercise.

‘If things are going exceptionally well or aren’t going right, we have a five-minute pit stop to refocus everyone.’

Encouraging staff through courses and training can also be a hook for employees. Peter Cullum, the executive chairman of insurance brokerage Towergate, says: ‘We actively ask all of our career staff to study for professional qualifications, and there are also a number of incentives in place to pay for study leave. We give some significant awards for success in examinations.’

When it comes to remuneration, there has to be a mix between being competitive and putting in place appropriate incentives.

At The Listening Company, Upton believes he has the balance right. ‘There are 31 project managers and I haven’t lost one in five years, which gives us the power of continuity.’

The system used by Upton is slightly unconventional. ‘All our bonuses are uncapped. Our clients fill out a quality score and give feedback on how good a job we’re doing, and then there are bonuses if we hit our internal financial targets. The key thing with remuneration is that it has to be aligned with what the client wants.’

A good leader will take the time to try and achieve the correct motivational balance in a business. Says McCluskey: ‘If you can get the culture and train people right, you have a solid base from which they can work.’