A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

What Do You Think Motivates <strong>Work</strong>ers?
Social scientists have studied many industries to determine what factors
workers consider most important in their jobs. Over the years, questionnaires
have been given to hundreds of thousands of workers, to both
knowledge workers and the ordinary garden-variety worker. While the
results have been known for sometime, they aren’t well-known. One of
these studies was done by the Public Agenda Foundation and referred to
by John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene in their book Re-inventing the
Corporation (Warner Books, 1985).
Before I give you these results, maybe you would like to take the test
yourself. I’ve given it to thousands of leaders in my seminars and courses.
All you need to do is to rank the following factors in the order of importance
you think your employees would put them. Take a couple of minutes
to do this before going on. Rank each factor in its order of importance to
those who work for you, <strong>with</strong> “1” being most important, “2” being second
most important, etc. There are thirteen factors in all in this list to rank.
SURVEY: WHAT DO YOU THINK WORKERS WANT?
__ <strong>Work</strong> <strong>with</strong> people who treat me <strong>with</strong> respect
__ Interesting work
__ Recognition for good work
__ Chance to develop skills
__ <strong>Work</strong>ing for people who listen if you have ideas about how to
do things better
__ A chance to think for myself, rather than just carry out
instructions
__ Seeing the end results of my work
__ <strong>Work</strong>ing for efficient managers
__ A job that is not too easy
__ Feeling well informed about what is going on
__ Job security
HOW TO MOTIVATE THE KNOWLEDGE WORKER ■ 221