In response, the Government has launched the 'Employee Engagement' taskforce, with the intention of motivating workers in other ways. Will Hutton recently argued on this website that employees want "to be trusted, respected and involved", but also want "to be noticed".
Keeping employees satisfied with their work experience, providing them with challenges and allowing them to have a sense of ownership in the business can have a tremendous effect on engaging today's workforce, as well as increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
As the economy picks up, employees' motivation/enthusiasm/happiness will become more important again.
So how can HR teams make this a reality?
Improving the work environment, offering flexible working hours and attractive benefits packages are all well and good, but research suggests that until work starts to feel less like work, human beings are not likely to perform at their best. The top-down management model has long been in place, but to make work feel less like work, this autocratic system has to be turned on its head by removing hierarchies and giving employees more autonomy to manage themselves.
As Gary Hamel told Steve Denning recently in Forbes magazine (May 2011): "We are moving into a creative economy where what you need out of your employees is not just diligence or intellect, but also creativity and passion... existing management models are likely to squelch that, rather than reward it."
What's more, surveys show that employees are most productive when they feel happy and appreciated, yet traditional hierarchies tend to create a lack of dialogue between levels of the company, leaving employees feeling unacknowledged and unengaged.
The problem with traditional hierarchies, particularly in larger organisations, is a lack of structured, consistent and meaningful flow of information between the layers. If the executive team that defines a business's goals and strategies rarely interacts with the frontline teams employed to execute against those goals and strategies, activity will be misaligned and goals won't be met. By removing hierarchies and giving each team visibility of the other's activities and priorities, both parties are empowered to keep things on course and address issues before they become big problems.
Once hierarchies are removed and goals more effectively communicated, it becomes easier to give employees the autonomy to manage their own work. By working to common goals, individuals are better positioned to assess priorities, setting and adjusting their own deadlines according to business goals. Most people respond well to a little freedom - human nature means that most people "step up" when given the opportunity.
In a more democratic workplace such as this, individuals are more likely to volunteer for work to which they think they can add value. The result is that individuals play to their core strengths, rather than stretching themselves too thinly or conforming to prescribed roles that may not maximise their potential.
At the core of this democratised approach to work is the notion that people are driven by a desire to contribute. While most of us don't spend our time curing cancer or building bridges to world peace, we still want to attach value to what we do. Individuals who can share in the greater vision of what they're doing and understand how their efforts contribute to the success of the organisation tend to be engaged and motivated. Still, it is important to have processes in place to track these contributions, so that individual and team successes can be recognised and rewarded. No-one is likely to be happy in an environment in which credit is not given where credit is due.
People who are happy at work put in far more effort, work longer hours and are more productive than those who aren't, as suggested by Linda Mignone VP, brand and strategic marketing, at US education provider Kaplan, in a recent article on CNN Money. They remain at their jobs twice as long and work 25% more than an unhappy employee. So the benefit of democratising the workforce is not only a happier workforce, but a more effective one too.
Trevor Ward (pictured) is general manager EMEA at HR software company AtTask
