By Darryl Stewart, Head of the Herd at Inclusion by IBEX.

I have heard it time and again. “The reason that people leave our agency or don’t do their job well is that our wages and benefits are just too low.  If we had better pay and better benefits, our staffing situation would be so much better.”

This is only partially true.  It’s true that pay and benefits must be at an acceptable threshold, in the ball park, so to speak, for comparable work the person could be doing elsewhere.  Beyond that, however, other things are much more important to the vast majority of people – especially younger people.

Studies show that people will willingly choose to work at a particular workplace for up to 30% less money than they could make elsewhere if certain conditions are met.  That’s right; people are willing to work for less given the right conditions.  As leaders, we need to become intimately familiar with these conditions. My thoughts on this topic are based on the book Drive, by Daniel Pink.  If you want to quickly get a new perspective on what truly motivates people watch this TED talk by Pink.

In his book, Pink explores the science behind motivation.  His conclusions helped me make sense of some of my observations about people and have given me some extra personal motivation to be an even better leader.  He offers up some exiting new ideas, put in terms that I had never considered.

Pink says that there are three things that all people crave and value more than money autonomy, mastery and purpose.  In this first post I am going to focus on the first one, autonomy.  In future posts I will talk about the other two.

Some real choices for direct service workers are:

• working for you at for $12.75 per hour, or working in a restaurant for about the same (with tips)
• working in a day program for $11 per hour  versus working in retail for about the same
• moving to another agency for 7% more per hour

How do you tip the scales in your favour?  One way is autonomy, giving people choice in how they go about getting things done.

We all crave autonomy and choice – being able to do things our own way gives us ownership and pride and makes a job well done feel even better.

At Inclusion by IBEX, we create software that makes staff scheduling, staff time tracking, payroll and HR much easier for developmental service agencies.  Creating software is a creative process, one that requires people to think outside the box.  The nature of writing software means that people all don’t have to follow a rigid schedule.  IBEX encourages our software team with the flexibility to work at home when they want to, very flexible working hours and time to experiment with new approaches.  Our software team spends 10% of their time on trying out anything they want and/or attending seminars or other learning events.

But how can this work in an agency with tight schedules and many mandatory rules to follow?

One example Pink describes is Zappos.  Zappos sells shoes over the internet and customer service reps answer the phone to take orders and answer questions.  But unlike typical call centre culture, reps at Zappos do not have their calls monitored or have to make the calls as short as possible or have to follow scripts.  They handle calls the way they want.  Their job is to serve the customers well; how they do it is up to them.  I believe this idea is applicable to direct service workers.  Direct service workers need to show up on time and they need to provide the supports, but how they do it, even when they do it, could likely be a source of some autonomy.  The key would be to promote autonomy, encourage it and foster a sense of pride amongst direct service workers in what they have learned by trying different approaches, their own way.

At Inclusion by IBEX, we have a customer support team we call Alpine Crew. It is a team with five people who work full time.  They all have to show up when they are scheduled because our customers depend on them. However, they work out amongst themselves who goes for lunch when, and that schedule changes each day depending on everyone’s needs.  The ladies work out a “ladies lunch” every few weeks, and the guys cover for them in return for an occasional Friday afternoon golfing session.  No one from “management” keeps track of how long the ladies lunch takes or how many times the golfing happens.  As long as the customer’s needs are met, these things are totally encouraged. Similar to Zappos, at IBEX, calls are not monitored nor timed and every Alpine Crew member is empowered to do what they think is right in any customer service situation.

It makes sense to me that we all want to be players, not pawns.   Each and every person that works for us wants to be an individual and feel the success of their own actions.  Understanding this and finding ways to support it and encourage it instead of “managing people” is a challenge I am laying down for myself.

I think my two examples are only scratching the surface on how to offer autonomy to people that have to be in a certain place at a certain time to do a certain thing.  If you have any more concrete examples, we would love the hear them.