Motivating and communicating

Good workplace

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When employees of good workplaces are asked what makes their companies so good, they talk first about attractive benefits.  But when you probe further, they all use terms like trust, pride, freedom, family, fairness and fun. These almost universal descriptions of the atmosphere and the ways in which people work and relate to each other, indicate that good workplaces share certain qualities.  They are: 

  • Friendly: informal, pleasant, with a relative lack of social hierarchy.
  • Not political: no constant jockeying for position or looking over your shoulder.
  • Fair: employee complaints are heard impartially and fully.
  • More than a job: employees have a role in defining their jobs, determining priorities and criticizing others, and feel that their company makes a valuable contribution to society and stands for something more than a business that makes a profit.
  • Like a family.

Great workplaces implicitly say people tend to work more cooperatively when they are treated with respect, given a say in what they do and given what they consider a fair share of the rewards for their efforts.  That may require disturbing managers' traditional role, but it's a non-manipulative answer to the mystery of motivation.

Without profits, a private enterprise will die. But what's important about a great workplace is that profits are not something to be achieved at the expense of the people responsible for creating them.  A great workplace suggests that it's possible to achieve that success while enriching the lives of the people who work there. 

Jules Ciotta is president of Motivation Communications Associates. He can be reached at (770) 457-4100 or julesciotta@comcast.net.

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