Employees Motivation

One of the interesting differences in perception between the private and Government sectors is that the private companies see their employees as assets whereas Government employees are seen as liabilities! The consequences are evident in the low productivity and poor quality of work output, and the shockingly low levels of motivation.

In order to encourage employee motivation, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) decided to honor best performing officials in each wing. It was decided to select the best performers by conducting election among each category of employees. We thought that peer election was the surest indicator of the performance of an official, and peer recognition (more than even recognition by superiors) the most satisfying achievement for an employee. However, in order to ensure that it didn't become a popularity contest, it was decided to give 30% weightage in votes to the Head of the Department (HoD).

The voting was conducted for slection of the best three officers in ten categories, including ministerial staff. Besides them, voting was organised for the categories of Revenue Inspectors, Bill Collectors, Assistant Engineers, Work Inspectors, Building Inspectors, Sanitary Inspectors, and Social Workers. In this election experiment, each employee was to be a voter as well as to be voted on. The employee could however vote only in the election to his or her category of employees. Like the preferential voting arrangement, the voter had an option of selecting the best three officials in his or her opinion in that particular category. The first option was given three marks, the second two marks and the third option one mark. The marks were then added to arrive at the total marks polled by each employee. The marks secured in this was given 70% weightage and was added to the marks given by the HoD.

Over 800 employees exercised their franchise through secret ballot. The entire voting and counting process was according to the guidelines of the Election Commission of India for regular elections. The elections drew unexpectedly huge repsonse and excitement, and a turnout of over 95%. It was also decided to give handsome cash compensations to all the three winners in each category.

That the elections generated a lot of anticipation can be gauged from the fact that a good number of employees, who obviously were very confident of their abilities, came to me after the results and tried to justify as to how they were atleast as efficient as the winners. That to me was clear sign that we had succeeded in igniting the fire of competition among these employees.

When we thought about this initiative, one of the major stumbling blocks was how to get across the general difficulty in sanctioning financial incentives, over and above their regular allowances, to employees. I faced great reluctance and opposition from within the system to spend a mere Rs 2,50,000 for monetary awards to these best performing employees. (It is relatively easier in Corporations and the like, but very difficult in Government Departments to overcome the procedural limitations and then to get the money for these incentives.) I am convinced that these awards have done more for employee motivation and competition in the VMC than any other initiative (of which there are only a handful) in the recent past. I would strongly recommend that Heads of Departments be given certain budgetary allocation, for such HR related initiatives. It will do more good in improving employee motivation levels than any number of superfluous additional increments granted routinely to anybody who ages naturally within the organization. We are, as they say, penny wise and pound foolish. Always! But now we better change, at least slowly!

A few learnings from this experiment. One, we have yet to realize how poor the motivation levels of government employees are, leave alone initiating steps to remedy the situation. From what I can see by scanning around, there seems to be little stirring in this direction. Second, more generally, we care very little for human resources management. Indeed, beyond the usual routine training programs, which invariably are so poorly tailored to meet even the basic functional requirements, we pay no attention to managing our employees. We do not have any manner HR concept ingrained in the system. Third, we need to spare resources for HR initiatives, over and above the routine trainings. Budgetary allocations need to be made for this. Finally, during the process of this election, I have been awakened to the potential utility of the concept of peer selection. We should be applying this extensively elsewhere.