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Home > Employer > HR Issues

It is the quality and the standard of the human resource recruited that plays a key roll in differentiating between a successful organisations and a "run of mill" organisation . In this section, we will discuss the issues relating to this valuable resource through a series of articles.

And yes, we are open to contributions from masters of this Art ... Are you one?

Inspire Creativity and Reward the effort

Let’s face it. All of us at some point in our career feel we deserve more than what we are getting. ‘Star-performers’ expect bigger rewards coming their way. We all have ideas about what these rewards should be, e.g. more money, bigger title, bigger office, etc. The question is, how can you as the employer provide meaningful incentives and rewards to your star-performer?

Sometimes the effort that goes into executing a certain plan is not rewarded at the same level. Recently an MBA student related an experience he had while working for an aircraft manufacturer. This student, then a fulltime employee, came up with a long-term plan that would save the company millions of dollars and also potentially save lives. For his effort he received a pen set. The ‘reward’ was the biggest reason why he left the company. According to the student, he hoped to work on other projects in return or set up a team for him to develop his new idea. It’s these kinds of incentives – autonomy, more time, more resources - that creative people respond to.

Different kinds of compensation, stock options and concrete financial rewards are all fine, but that is not always why people stay on in a company. Employers should structure work environments so that creativity is both fostered and rewarded at a time when many companies are still worried about losing their best talents.

The idea is to look at the models behind creativity. As an employer your job is to identify those areas where your employees are most creative, most productive and most fulfilled. Once you determine that, give them autonomy to pursue ideas in those fields. In the end, creativity leads to a better work environment. Efficiency and productivity increases when we do something that engages us.

What happens when your employee fails at a given task? How do you avoid rewarding people who go off on useless or wasteful projects without inhibiting the free flow of ideas? The usual tactic is to shut down work interest is by punishing failures. However, this is certainly not the best line of action to take. Rather if your employee does have a groundbreaking idea, give him the opportunity to back up his plan irrespective of the outcome. You look at the due diligence that has gone into it; you study the business plan, you check to see if the employee has done his or her homework. Then you reward both his good homework and his creative thinking.

The point is, you can follow the established procedures and expect to get a lot of failures in return. Or else try inspiring the best out of your team and improve the overall quality of work. All it requires is a bit of creative thinking. Here are a few thoughts, which might help you along the way.

• One cannot discount the draw of financial rewards and incentives. Performance driven incentives, bonuses, employee ownership plans and stock options can prove to be quite effective.

• Encourage your employee to grow, give him the resources to try out new ideas.

• Help him balance his personal and professional life. Introduce concepts like flexi time to work offsite.

• Age related incentives come highly appreciated. There will be certain differences between the needs of 27 years old versus a 40 year old. Provide for them according to their requirements.

Sometimes it’s the little things that improve work environments. Example, allow employees to use personal stereo headsets on the job. Job productivity actually increases because distraction is far less.

When introducing a reward system, think whether you want to base it on seniority, quantity or quality of work. If you are rewarding seniority without rewarding quality, you can’t expect employees to be appreciative. What you want is high quality, creative people thinking out of the box. Those are the people who should get rewarded.

Employee feedback is another useful way to encourage workers to think creatively. But as an employer, you must respond to their feedbacks. Act on some of their suggestions. The worst thing one can do is taking the feedback and stacking it somewhere it cannot be found. Encourage employees to offer their input into a decision. Whether the feedback is being used or not, detailed reasons to support the decision should be given.

A good employer will always try to bring out the best in his team. It takes a lot more effort to get the creative juices flowing, but at the end of it all you have a team, which is willing, contended and productive. In the long run, both you the employer and your employee stand to gain from one another.

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