Morale and psychological empowerment
Productivity and innovation suffers when employees are demotivated, which can occur due to a range of interlocking factors.
In previous articles we have considered trust and team cohesion as important factors in organisational effectiveness and performance. However, the daily and subjective experiences of the individual at work can be highly relevant to work commitment and day-to-day performance.
Dr Gretchen Spreitzer has investigated the role of empowerment in organisations for over two decades, finding that the internal assessments of their own empowerment matter more than externally selected choices of managers.
While management strategies such as participative decision-making can enable greater empowerment scores by staff, ultimately, it is the internal evaluations of staff and how they feel about their work which will be more impactful on their perceived empowerment levels.
Separately, Jackson et al’s investigations into how employee morale affects performance found that it is most highly dependent upon recognition of staff for their good work, and perceptions on being treated fairly and equitably, especially in comparison to their peers.
Drawing on both elements of research, these combined approaches provide robust insights into the psyche of your workforce and whether they are likely to be motivated to be high performing individuals. The self-assessment statements identified as most relevant are:
Empowerment
Competence — I believe I am good at my job.
Meaning — I believe that my work matters.
Self-determination — I can largely choose how I prefer to work.
Internal impact — I can contribute ideas and influence how my team works.
Morale
Recognition — I am recognised for doing a good job.
Fair play / justice — I do not feel that I am being mistreated or taken advantage of.
These factors can be turned into a simple six-dimensional diagnostic that scales well to teams, departments, and whole organisations, providing useful quantitative evidence to managers about the causes of failing teams and low performance.