Most organisations want more out of their employees. But what will it take to get staff to go that extra mile and release their discretionary effort? Chris Legge has some answers.

Research suggests that within a typical organisation, 20% of employees give everything, 60% would give more if there was something in it for them and 20% give no more than they need to keep their jobs.

In other words, 80% of staff aren’t as productive as they could be and that can have a huge impact on the bottom line. So how could this 80% be persuaded to release that ‘discretionary effort’?

Creating the right culture and environment

Releasing discretionary behaviour depends very much on creating the right environment. In this respect, leadership is an important contributory element as one critical aspect of a leader’s role is to establish an effective working environment and culture that delivers the maximum from employees.

Successful leaders also recognise that supporting the ‘right’ behaviours from employees triggers discretionary effort. In this situation, the leader’s role is to (a) identify the required behaviours and (b) reinforce them through effective coaching and support.

The best way to do this is to follow a proven five-step model focusing on relevant behaviours:

• Pinpoint – specify the results and behaviours that positively influence the results and make sure they are under the control of the performer.




• Measure – test the pinpoints to make sure they are measurable and then develop a mechanism to track them;
  
• Feedback – provide a visual representation of progress on results against behaviour.




• Reinforce – create a plan to positively reinforce critical behaviours and celebrate along the way.




• Evaluate – continually monitor and evaluate progress, adjust or change pinpoints (both results and behaviours) if results are not being achieved.

Ensuring that the right pinpoints are established is critical to success, as is measurement. The importance of measuring and demonstrating small, but successful changes in performance and behaviour reinforces the coaching activity and the learning and development experience of the employee.

Influencing discretionary behaviour

Once an organisation has created the right environment, it is in a better position to influence discretionary behaviour. Research carried out by John Purcell at Bath University has found that this arises from having a positive psychological contract between the employer and employee and high levels of organisation citizenship behaviour. Increased commitment and high levels of job satisfaction lead to increased performance. In other words, performance is a function of AMO, where ‘a’ = ability, ‘m’ = motivation and ‘o’ = opportunity.

All too often, the assumption is made that these elements adequately exist when organisations are designing and delivering performance or incentive schemes. However, some schemes do not always deliver the required results – often due to inappropriate or inadequate diagnosis – for example, if an employee lacks ability, then appropriate training must be deployed.

Addressing motivation requires employee involvement, and understanding the concept of AMO significantly improves the success of both design and delivery of the scheme. Employee engagement is best served by asking employees what influences their desire to (a) work at one level and (b) unlock their discretionary effort. This can be through employee surveys or established employee forums.

Unlocking discretionary effort

Usually it is the employer who creates the environment that unlocks employees’ discretionary effort. But more benefit may be gained through encouraging employees to take the lead in undertaking additional related activities.

Getting employees to think through their day-to-day activities, how they may contribute more to supporting the business objectives and how they might enhance their role in order to improve their personal relationship with work, will stimulate discretionary effort.

In addition, if roles can encompass areas of employee self-interest (related to the organisation), they will endeavour to deliver in those areas because of their enthusiasm for such activity.

Interestingly, an individual’s sense of worth can significantly influence the amount of discretionary effort they may exhibit. Developing a ‘can do’ culture within an organisation is a clear way of leveraging positive attitudes and diminishing the self doubt that sometimes occurs when faced with new challenges.

This additional performance may be reflected in increased promotion prospects, performance related pay, some form of recognition or even just the satisfaction of getting a good job done.

It is also important that the individual has the opportunity to illustrate their enhanced activity. Employees should use the appraisal process as a vehicle for capturing that additional commitment beyond agreed targets, objectives and behaviours.

Obtaining or providing formal and informal feedback offers the most effective impact on discretionary effort. Regular informal feedback has been linked to a 40% rise in employee performance and a 20% increase in discretionary effort.

Give more, to get more

Based upon the research we started out with, for the 60% who would give more, discretionary effort is arguably dependent on some form of reward – financial or non-financial.

We all accept that an employee’s financial reward is a necessary element in the psychological contract. Hopefully, we also accept that recognition factors and personal and professional acknowledgement are key elements in rewarding employees. All of these mechanisms are relevant in releasing discretionary effort.

Praise for a job well done is probably the most powerful, least costly, yet most underused employee engagement tool – but how often do we provide it?

Discretionary effort can also be realised through incentive and gainsharing schemes. An incentive scheme rewards individuals based on measured achievement and results. Gainsharing is a bonus mechanism based on a formula that allows groups of employees to share in the financial gains resulting from increased productivity.

Worth the effort?

Releasing employee discretionary effort will have a significant impact on productivity and performance. Tapping into discretionary effort is not a ‘one-hit wonder’; it can be re-used time and time again. The key is to understand what mechanisms are most likely to succeed at this time in order to influence the 60% plus of employees with untapped potential.

Realistically, one would not expect to release all this potential through a single activity – employees will move in and out of the discretionary tranches – the challenge is to build and maintain employee effort and reinforce the top tranche. Our question to you is, how are you addressing that 60%?

For more information, contact Chris Legge at: Chris.Legge@erconsultants.co.uk