Nov 09, 2014
One in five employees excel, but the other four matter more.
Scroll DownGlobal studies show that only 20% of workers give their full discretionary effort and are truly engaged in their jobs. While conventional wisdom would suggest you spend your recognition and rewards efforts on these top performers, behavioral economists would encourage you to focus your time and attention on the remaining 80%.
Why the 80% need to be a priority
The engagement gap is critically important. The more engaged a workforce is the better a company is likely to perform on a range of key financial measures. The good news is engaged employees are created, not born!
Certainly some people are just naturally talented and intrinsically motivated to do their best. They are “optimizers” of every situation and opportunity that comes their way. These are your top 20% and of course you do want to take good care of these exceptional employees. By all means continue to show your appreciation, recognize them publicly and privately and make sure they are well compensated. They must know you value them or they will easily go work for your competition who will welcome them with open arms.
Satisficers not slackers
However, most mid-level performers aren’t slackers, they are simply practicing what behavioral economists call “satisficing behavior.” It’s defined as “aiming to achieve only satisfactory results because the satisfactory position is familiar, hassle-free and secure; whereas aiming for the best achievable result would require costs, effort and incurring risk.”
Turn satisficers to optimizers
To turn satisficers to optimizers you need to draw them out of their comfort-zone by:
To help your mid-level performers succeed, you need to create an environment that values ideas, risk, innovation and progress. The easier you make it for people to step outside of their comfort-zones, the more engaged they will become in their work.