Plant your people and watch your business blossom

Cary L Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School, says employees need to be nurtured for maximum job contribution

The internationally acclaimed anthropologist Studs Terkel, who interviewed thousands of workers for his best-selling book Working, summarised his view of work in the most dismal terms: “Work is, by its very nature, about violence — to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all) about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.”

Yes, for some people work can be stressful, disempowering and unpleasant, but for many it isn’t, or at least doesn’t have to be. Work can be engaging, fulfilling and can provide people with meaning to their lives. As Confucius once said: “Choose a job that you like and you will not have to work a day in your life.”

The issue for any organisation is how it can make the work environment a place that meets people’s needs, enhances their well-being, while at the same time contributes to the bottom line.

Only by doing this can we recruit, retain and motivate our staff. For me, well-being means a workplace where people have some autonomy to do their job, where they have some flexibility in terms of when and where they do it and, most important of all, where they are valued by their manager. One of the most significant aspects of a person’s job satisfaction and well-being, and their desire to commit and stay with an organisation, is how they are treated by their own line manager.

Too often at work people are managed by fault-finding and negative feedback, and not by praise and reward. Yes, it is important to provide people with specific feedback on poor performance, but it is also the case that they are given ‘positive strokes’ when they have performed above and beyond the call of duty. Mark Twain realised this when he wrote: “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can somehow become great.”

We need to understand that when an individual feels valued, the individual’s health and well-being will be enhanced as will, ultimately, their contribution to their job and organisation. In a disposable world, when talented and skilled employees have numerous job options, employers have to consider how they are going to retain their best and brightest. This requires exploring all the factors that make that person engaged, committed and valued, and doing something about them rather than assuming that money alone is a motivator. Most of us spend more of our waking hours at work than at home and in our private life, therefore, work has to be satisfying and psychologically rewarding.

As the old Chinese proverb goes: “If you are planning for one year, plant rice; if you are planning for 10 years, plant trees; if you are planning for a hundred years, plant people.”