The Invisible Hand E book- Employee behavior- Reward or not tor eward

Culture and work ethics

In a culture where collectivism is valued people respect social acceptance than that of individual excellence. They value the group needs of cohesion. They work as one team.This is the case with most African nations. Collectivism  emphasises on  collaborative execution of  tasks, and focuses  on what people have in common.

Individualism is focused on  engagement in competitive tasks and the  emphasis is on making  the individual distinct.

In general in culture which puts importance  on agreeing on social norms and jobs are interdependent,

collectivism is preponderant, whereas in stratified cultures  where affluence, independence,

and differences are emphasized, individualism is preponderant

The culture of the so called affluent society like United States is individualism, always forcing everyone  to exhibit  the “American dream”.

Every new generation of Americans is taught to strive individually for a better quality of life and a higher standard of living than the previous generations. Similarly, UK, Australia, Netherlands also reflect culture of individualism. Indians score in the middle 48% perhaps the Hindu philosophy is also similar to the African Ubuntu.

It is worth emulating the learning methods from some African culture where they teach children the concept of respect for others and collectivism. An anthropologist during his stay in Ubuntu community narrates of an exciting experience. He proposed a game to a group of children by placing a basket of chocolates under a tree 100 meters away and told that the winner gets all. The children surprisingly did not compete with one another and start the run. They all joined their hands and ran together and got the sweets only to share and enjoy. When asked for the reason for their behavior they would respond by saying Ubuntu (humanness). Their view of life is “how can one be happy by making someone else unhappy”.

The word -Ubuntu- originates from one of the Bantu dialects of Africa. Ubuntu teaching is for striving to help people with the spirit of service and to show respect to others and be honest and trustworthy.

In the Shona language which is spoken by majority

 In Zimbabwe and in Zulu also the common teaching is collective living “munhu munhu nekuda kwevanhu”.

Ubuntu is an African universal human brotherhood concept. Ubuntu is the potential for being human, to value the good of the others above self.

In one play school in the north-western part of India close to the Pakistan border, I saw unique method adopted by the teacher to train young children to help each other. In the play school, she had kept different balls of various sizes and from small to bigger heavier ones. The toddlers are made to stand in a line and one after other; the children are made to attempt and lift the ball starting with lightest ball. The child is given success experience initially. Once the child succeeds she moves to lift the next heavier and bigger ball and they continue till the child in front is unable to lift alone.

That is the time when all other children are encouraged to join and collectively lift the heaviest ball. The experience gives them experiential learning of philosophy to live the life with “United we stand” and for survival near the conflict-ridden border area, this is very vital.

Today’s workplace is much complex and different in widespread use of technology and multiplicity of culture. Therefore the tested and proven reward programs are not enough to produce the enthusiasm and motivation.

To prove how work itself is valued, people were offered enough money to live comfortably for their entire life but 70 % of those who had jobs showed preference to continue working. 

On the other hand, there are people who enjoy what they were doing and would not look for going up the ladder. What is then a good work or great workplace and how to create it?

The good work which motivates is described by Martin Luther king.” If a man is sweeper and doing the street sweeping job he should be doing it like Michel Angelo or Beethoven so that everyone stops by to wonder what a job it was.”

More than fifty percent   of Companies in the USA use some form of incentive plan and spend over seventy seven billion dollars annually. More than half of that are non-cash awards. Hefty incentives, paid vacations, birthday treat, theme parties, and plaques have been in existence as rewards based on behaviorist model of driving force.

 In most manufacturing setups output based incentives called as payment by results, are prevalent though the system has changed its shape in recent years and is  known as gain-sharing or work team results

  

Many forward-thinking managers, who promote team-work, participative management culture, continuous improvement efforts and the like support the use of rewards to institute and maintain these very efforts. They simply use reward as bait to accomplish their own goals.

Having experimented with many cultural groups by introducing both monetary and non-monetary rewards I came to conclusion that “if you do you are damned and if you don’t do you are still damned”.

What I mean is that when you introduce the rewards and if your attrition is still high, you are facing the management’s ire. If you do not introduce the rewards you will suffer from criticism of employees for being very conservative. Hence this attempts to clear the air on rewards.

more in the e book kindle version to be released