Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Antalan: Motivating workers By Roger P. Antalan Dateline IGaCoS
THE worker is often taken for granted. Perhaps it is because they are the quiet partners in the running of a business and the other professions. They have not passed the Bar, nor hurdled any Board exams. They are the backbone of the organization.
An organization is really fortunate if its workers display the noble qualities of doing their jobs conscientiously, loving their work and being proud of their company, and carry themselves with dignity, honesty, fairness and self-discipline. It will be quiet in the Western Front, as they say.
The laborer, however, cannot be taken for granted. There are four important resources in an organization, namely, the human resources, the financial resource, the physical assets, and information. The management books say that the human resource is the most important. It is people who count.
Like the other resources, the human resource has to go through the four management steps: acquisition, development, maintenance and utilization. Aside from the crucial process of hiring and selection of employees, there must be ample continued training and development. Maintenance is handled through better pay, benefits and other incentives. And the workers must be involved in meaningful work.
But, as many companies know very well, life in the workplace is not a rose garden. A Human Relationship Coordinator was scratching his head: "Times are hard. It is harder to land a job nowadays. And yet when people get hired, a number lose interest in their work. We have problems with unexplained absences, faked sick leaves, tardiness, sloppiness in work, insubordination and dishonesty. It's like watering dead sticks."
Although flippantly presented the problems are well described by the four main bones in every organization: The wishbones: wishing somebody else would do something about the problem. The jawbones: Doing all the talking but very little else. The knucklebones: Those who knock everything. Those who are always against. The backbones: Those who carry the brunt of the load and do most of the work.
Many organizations have designed a lot of programs to motivate the workers, to improve the workers and their performance. To mention a few, teambuilding and altitudinal change and value formation workshops, individual counseling, performance-based promotions and increases, out-company trainings, etc.
The famous physicist and inventor, Thomas Edison, gave this message to a youth assembly, would-be workers, many years ago. 1. Always be interested in whatever you undertake. 2. Don't mind the clock, but keep at it and let nature indicate the necessity of rest. 3. Failures, so called, are the fingerposts pointing out the right directions for those who are willing to learn. 4. Hard work and genuine interest in everything that makes for human progress will make men and women more valuable and acceptable to themselves and to the world.
Edison added with great aplomb: "I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun." The problem is that some people find work drudgery. Whether work be pleasant or not depends less upon the work itself-provided it be honest-than upon the attitude toward it.
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do. A worker who does only what he has to do is a slave. One who willingly does more than is required of him is truly a free man. As one anonymous writer put it: "Work done grudgingly is servitude. Work done willingly is service. Work done lovingly is a sacrament."
Just a little warning to the unconcerned worker: If you think your work is boring, wait until you sit around an unemployment office.
The worker therefore is best advised to strive to regard his work as his best friend in the world, and the chances are that his work will became friendly to him.
