The price of getting more for less

A friend of mine was furious with her boss.  She felt she deserved a promotion, but instead of which she ended up with even more work, and no recognition.  Essentially, the attitude of her boss was ‘I know the jobs market is difficult right now, so you are just going to have to put up with it.’   Needless to say, this has left my friend angry, de-motivated and all the more determined to move on when the opportunity presents itself.  All that energy that could have been put into doing her job really well is being channeled into finding another job to prove her boss wrong.

 Sound familiar?   One of the big themes of the moment is that organisations are under strain.  Managers in the public sector are having to find ways of doing more with fewer staff.  Universities feel they have to do more to justify the high fees they are charging students and this often translates into even more work for academic staff.  And managers in the private and third sectors have been under pressure since the beginning of the recession. Pay rises are few and far between and promotion hard to find.  This can easily lead to people feeling angry and disenchanted. 

 Now, imagine you were the CEO of that organization.  What would you do?  What should you do?

 Well before you decide on what to do, it might be worth researching what really works. And that’s where CMI can help.  What is the hard evidence?  You could do worse than downloading the highly rated article:

 The ‘need to get more for less’:  A new model of ‘engaging leadership and evidence of its effect on team productivity, and staff morale and wellbeing at work

by Professor Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe at the University of Bradford School of Management, a member of CMI’s  Academic Advisory Council and Juliette Alban-Metcalf of the Real World Group.  It probably won’t surprise you to learn that research shows that behavior of the line manager is the biggest factor in de-motivating employees.  So what makes a positive difference?  The article shows how a particular model of leadership which was tested on thousands of managers was found to significantly increase levels of employee engagement and, when embedded into the culture of teams, has a significant impact on productivity.  Currently it is our most highly rated research article.  You can download this and other cutting edge research here and clicking on the ‘Read an Article’ button.

 Alternatively you might to want to look at the topic more broadly, or in greater depth. This September’s Author of the Month is management guru Professor Cary Cooper CBE CCMI who has written extensively on well-being and employee morale http://www.managers.org.uk/bookclub-author-september-2011  (His latest books can be posted to you from our library, of course.) You can also catch Cary’s Q&A session here to sample his shrewd advice.

 One for your diary

And don’t forget you can post your own question live to renowned leadership guru John Adair on 6th October at 2.30pm.  Follow this link  and make a note in you diary!