Why you need to get organized to motivate

At HUCAMA we believe that knowing the importance of personality will help you to improve business results.

Think about it.

We live in a changing world. How your job routine is structured today can be old-fashioned tomorrow. Technology evolves faster than most of us understand. And globalization forces us to think differently if we want to be a leader in our field.

In this dynamic world, organizations need employees with energy and an unflagging commitment. Without this, organizations will be hard pressed to navigate their way through turmoil and position themselves for success when market conditions rebound.

So, great employees are the key to success in today’s market. But organizations are facing their most diverse workforce yet. Especially when you consider life pursuits, cultural norms, and key values. The way we understand people management today will be obsolete in no time. Obsolete and detrimental to the bottom line.

 

Today’s workforce of one

In today’s organization, everyone in the workforce has an idea of what they want from their work. Everyone comes with their unique personality and preferences. Everyone brings something different to the table.

Despite this most HR people know that most organizations manage their people in a one-size-fits-all box. To ensure quality, efficiency, and fairness, they train everyone on the same knowledge and in the same way. They rank everyone’s performance on the same measuring scale. They provide the same rewards, assuming motivation is the same for everyone. Herein lies a fundamental flaw.

To engage, attract and keep today’s (demanding) workforce, organizations need something else. They need a new way to understand people management. One that would capitalize on the unique talents of each individual. In other words, organizations should not treat their workforce as a single homogeneous entity. Rather, they should treat every employee as a workforce of one with unique needs, aspirations, and preferences that vary over time.

In their book “Workforce As One – Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization” Cantrell and Smith describe the next big opportunity in people management. They discuss how understanding the workforce as one is a game-changing approach to talent management. Their years of research on talent management show how those who customize inside for employees as well as outside for customers, win.

 

Design the organization to fit the employee

So, what does this mean? Do we have to design organizations to fit the employee, rather than demanding the employee to fit the organization?

Do we have to create an organization that creates customized work experiences for its employees to help people learn in exactly the way they learn best, and reward them in the way that motivates them?

How does this scenario sound to you?

Our answer would be yes. To be a leader in your specific field you need to put in place the ideas of “Workforce of one”.  ‘Why,’ you ask? Because an organization designed to fit the employee would not only be better to engage, attract and keep great people, but also be better at unleashing their people’s full potential.

And know this: designing the organization to fit the employee is not about expanding the HR budgets. It is about using HR budgets in a more targeted manner to maximize the value of every dollar spent.

 

Design a career customized to an employee’s strengths and interests

For greater motivation and learning results employers need to customize the job. Customizing the job would help employees feel more supported by their organization’s practices and enable an improvement in results. Customizing the job requires that employers know what motivates everyone in the workforce. It also requires that the individual knows what motivates them! Personality tests are a very useful tool, in this case. They can help the employer as well as the employee to look at inclinations, habits, the way they approach the world, what type of people they collaborate best with and much more.

Personality tests are a very powerful tool to start a conversation about how to customize the job. Everyone around the table must remember that a personality test is not a way to predict future behavior or define unchanging core personality traits. Personality tests are a tool to improve an organization’s ability to develop teams and to attract and hire top talent by customizing recruiting practices toward specific, desired individuals. Studies show that this approach increases engagement and lowers turnover cost because people who receive customized offerings feel more satisfied in their jobs.

 

Lumina Spark

Lumina Spark is the next generation of professional development tools supporting individuals, teams, and organizations to be more effective and improve the bottom line. It is unique among psychometric tools because it avoids any stereotyping. Lumina Spark provides an interactive colorful framework for better self-understanding. It helps people identify how to improve their working relationships with others.

Using Lumina Spark to treat every employee as an individual will help organizations engage, attract and keep great people. It will also help organizations to unleash their people’s full potential to better contribute to performance and profits.

Lumina Spark recognizes the complex contradictions that make each one of us unique. An organization that embraces the importance of personality will be a magnet for great talent. It will be able to treat everyone as a unique talent. Understand the social capital of the group and organize the teamwork by individual preferences.

HUCAMA represents Lumina Learning in the Nordic region. In a future article, we will speak about the full engagement of a team and how to get the most of everybody in the organization using Lumina Spark.