With all the talk about pay and bonuses, I thought I’d throw my two two pence in. Pay is important, don’t get me wrong, but in my experience
pay alone does not inspire loyalty, engagement or even motivation.
As margins shrink and the credit crunch bites, businesses such as ours are looking for ways to engage employees who have been told that their pay is frozen and bonuses for 2009 are out.
Everybody likes games. Can we make a game out of our daily grind?
Can work be fun?
Last Friday we picked 12 people’s names out of a hat and asked them to divide themselves into two teams. Each team was given a set amount of work and they were asked to use their skills and ingenuity to complete the work given as fast and as accurately as possible.
Every time a file was completed they had to ring a large ship’s bell that we bolted to the wall. The winning team would get to go home half hour early.
The day was a huge success. A client who was visiting our office was amazed by how much fun people seemed to be having. On the productivity front the teams completed files that would normally take up to five business days to process. Team members were paired up with people that they never get to work with. Natural leaders emerged. New, faster ways of doing things were put into practice.
Everybody else cheered them on. I have never seen our office so vibrant, and work was never completed so quickly and to such a high standard.
Cost to the business — minimal. Reward factor — high. Was it worth it? Definitely.
