Hay Group India Blog

Many employees are well motivated. They want to provide quality service to their customers but are hindered by weak systems, heavy bureaucracy and conflicting pressures. Organizations can function on this motivation alone, at least in the short term. But if employees lack the support and business processes to get their jobs done, they can ‘burn out’ from the effort of just trying to do a decent job. The result is a workforce of frustrated people. If employees are engaged but not ‘enabled’, around one-third of the workforce is likely to be making plans to leave. (This figure rises to a massive 76 per cent if employees are both unmotivated and not enabled).

Frustrated employees tend to behave in one of three ways:

1. Break through the performance barrier – through force of effort, some highly engaged employees find ways to overcome the obstacles to getting their jobs done.However these high-value individuals are at risk of burnout in the medium term,usually after about six months

2. Stop trying – other less driven employees reduce their efforts to match their limited opportunities to succeed

3. Leave – yet others will seek greener pastures where their strong motivation to succeed can be matched with more supportive working conditions. This creates an unfortunate drain of what is often an organization’s best and brightest talent.

On top of this ‘mindset’ challenge, there is also the issue of the survey approach itself. For surveys to deliver real ROI, they should be connected with strategy rather than be run as a standalone HR exercise.

When developing our client-specific survey solutions, we strike a unique balance between engagement and enablement to provide you with the information you need to take action.

By including both components in our surveys, we are able to provide clear direction on systemic issues as well as issues specific to what managers need to do to create effective work environments.