De-motivating Your Employees

Most managers recognize the need to motivate their employees. They work hard at it and sometimes achieve less success than they expect. One reason for that may be they still do things that de-motivate their employees. These de-motivators are usually unintentional, but they are none-the-less effective.

I details some of these de-motivating actions in the article "Top 10 New Manager Mistakes", but one of the biggest de-motivators may be less obvious. It's the issue of the pay differential between top executives and the average worker.

I've written before about the stupidity of CEO salaries being out of line, but an article I read this morning really underscored the point for me. In the MSN article "CEOs near record on pay ratios", the authors note that the average US CEO earned 262 times the pay of the average worker. Since there are only 260 work days a year, they point out that means "an average CEO earned more in one workday than a worker earned in 52 weeks." Since CEO compensation is public information for larger companies, the workers know what the CEO is paid versus their own pay. It's another de-motivator.

To be fair, there are executives who get it. Jim Sinegal, the CEO of Costco has achieved an enviable profitability for his company by taking an employee-friendly approach in an industry that treats employees as expendable. One of the things he has done is to limit his salary. He has said, "I figured that if I was making something like 12 times more than the typical person working on the floor, that that was a fair salary".

What can you do about it? If you aren't the CEO or Chairman are you powerless? No. You can keep striving for that top spot and remember these lessons when you get there. Along the way, you can make sure that the employees who are entrusted to you are treated fairly and ethically. You may step on a few toes or ruffle a few feather to protect them, but that will help you understand whether you are a leader or just someone filling a manager's chair.