Are you giving your employees a Carrot when...
They Need a Stick!

Is it a carrot that is needed today to bring about employee dedication?

What’s causing your employees to move into action?

The old story goes that that you encourage a horse to move forward by sticking an incentive in front of it to get forward motion.

Conversely, another saying is that you get a mule to move (some say) by whacking the mule across over the head with a board.

Again, forward movement is achieved.

The question now becomes; what is causing your employees to move?

Many companies believe that throwing money at employees produces the following results:

• Increased performance

• Increased motivation

• Increased employee loyalty

The trouble comes when the old financial incentives no longer achieve the same results they once had.

Like a drug addict that needs ever increasing dosages of the narcotic to have the same effect...

Employees will require even more remuneration on an ongoing basis to bring about the same result.

If this becomes an organizational practice to just throw good money after bad results; the organization may find itself facing mounting financial loss, frequent work stoppages, slow downs or strikes as is the case in the West.

Are organizations for fear of offending the worker reduced to treating them like enfants that you must coerce into doing the right thing?

There comes a point where organizations have to set a precedent and demand a fair days work for a fair days pay.

Even if this means releasing those who would by their very presence hold the organization hostage.

In using the symbolic stick to get rid of the Bad Apples from the organization those that remain will realize that no one is sacrosanct.

However, taken the course of The Stick does not mean that organizations should wield it with reckless abandonment.

In doing so the organization may find it has transformed a once vibrant company culture into one of fear. Where no alternative views are voices for fear of The Stick!

Organizations will find that by Respecting, employees and giving a sense of inclusiveness the results will reach further and last longer any carrot offered as an incentive.

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