Hack:
A 'case of the Monday's', no more. Kicking work anxiety to the moonshot.

By Vidia S. Ramdeen

November 24, 2011 at 6:37pm

Systems Integration

Motivation Theory

performance improvement

performance management

Moonshots

Take the work out of work

Develop holistic performance measures

Summary

Video games are attractive to players because such games offer direct incentives and rewards for accomplishments achieved. Gamers game because the activity offers individual award and recognition as well as team awards and recognition. The rather meritocratic nature of the gaming environment provides gamers the opportunity to harness resources available within the game and achieve an objective. Often, success in games are measured by various metrics of productivity, such as, time of completion, percentage of completion of all tasks, percentage of quality in completion of tasks, and ‘extra’s’, in the case of the organization, this would equal input regarding enhancing processes regarding increasing efficiency or effectiveness of either departmental procedure or of personal job requirements. For example, yielding a more time efficient solution to analyzing financial data and forecasting processes by investing into a software upgrade or by redesigning the current process of analysis to ‘see’ a new way of conducting particular business analysis.

By offering incentives for completion of tasks in a certain time frame (logging into the ‘game system’ from a remote location to monitor time spent on work activity), the attractive nature of being able to ‘clock in and clock out’ on your own time means there are no supervisors monitoring work. Supervisors become responsible for correcting the issues responsible for the lack of motivation from employees. Ostensibly, supervisors become motivational coaches to their employees as opposed to providing oversight and monitorization to ensure that work activity is performed to organizational standards. Employees are paid to perform a task for the organization, yet are rewarded for successfully playing the game and earning high scores. Successful completion of tasks and of a high quality can accumulate points and exchange for tangible/intangible rewards. By utilizing technology such as ‘gotomypc.com’ and the virtual time clock, workers can migrate out of the office and work in areas where there is a secure connection available.

Problem

Anxiety is often the catalyst to the genesis of more concrete problems yielding employee unhappiness at work. Employees dreading Mondays are likely to dread going into work for reasons not limited to the following:

An overbearing boss/supervisor
Hostility/Ambivalence: Potentially arising from employee absence from intraorganizational activity. Unfortunately, these employees may be labelled as unfriendly or introverted and deemed unfavorable for leadership positions
Getting up early
Morning traffic
Climate (cold weather, snow)
Sales or client services of a large number of customers whom often are irate
Any additional interaction with individuals one under alternative settings would rather avoid having any interaction with

The importance of addressing 'case of the Monday's' and work anxiety in general is the increase in employee happiness. Happy employees are more enthusiastic about their jobs and therefore are less focused on monetary rewards. Additionally, an enthusiastic employee does suggest more production, accuracy, and generally more curteous than an unenthusiastic employee.

The problem in question is: taking the 'work out of work'. The issues of motivation, intrapreneurship, and performance metrics, in addressing analytical and relatively redundant work processes remains critical to reducing variance in result.

Additionally, the problem at hand is one of motivation. The daily routine of many jobs, let us use account reconciliation, for example, are a critical part of internal due diligence operations yet the employees performing these tasks are marginally compensated and have no real motivation to perform their job error free other than to work hard enough to not lose their job. Yes, it is very similar to the premise of the movie, Office Space.

Solution

Introduction

Organizations must incorporate performance measurement & reward measurement systems integration into the archetype of the IT framework. I have to go off topic: Truth be told, many organizations remain archaic in regard to IT infrastructure. In just about all organizations, there is not a system wide virtual organizational linked network to where one can log on and access a host of programs and software to engage the employee within the requisite area of operattions.

For example, the following is how the system should work: Sally sits at her computer and logs on to the organization's network (from anywhere) and sees the following:

Name: Sally

Employee ID: xxxxxx

Department: Finance

Position: Analyst

Job activities for the week: | |Performance Measurement | | Points

- Produce next month's inventory forecast | | 0% complete | | 0

- input financial data into system from paper based statements | | 0% complete | | 0

- Review financial reporting documents for accuracy and compliance | | 0% complete | | 0

Software available:

Crystal Reports <Please click to see recent activity>

xxxx

Programs Available:

MS Office <Please click to see recent activity>

xxxx

The personalized network shown above allows for direct performance and rewards management via the points system. An added benefit, training sessions will be accessible within the system to train the employee in core performance areas. For example, if the employee is not able to create pivot tables, the employee will access a training module that graphically explains how to create and manage pivot tables using the spreadsheet data and how to create reports. This will remove the dead-weight loss in the market between the employer and the job-seeker when speaking to a lack of knowledge regarding software and programs usage for company operations.

Many functions within the organization can be performed remotely at least some of the time, if not all of the functions. For example: a research scientist working in a lab invariably has paper work that can be quickly scanned into the system to enable remote activity. The scientist can access a remote login via the cloud server and have encrypted information forwarded to the cloud server from the host server. This would serve to divert potential hackers or spies.

Even supermarkets can benefit from this system. Cashiers can receive bonuses for cashing out customers faster when customer traffic is high. This can be measured as a function of the product scanning speed and electronic closeout of each customer by the system. After each customer has paid, the system acknowledges the customer transaction as complete, logs the transaction under the employee ID number, and resets for the next customer. Porters and other employees can receive bonuses for shopping carts returned, the cleanliness of the store, or the rate of stocking shelves from inventory supply. If an employee must address a specific customer service issue, the employee is able to now log that into the system and receive points toward a reward.

Cash registers will be directly connected to the system using an enhanced IT platform to report the data received. The ID badges of porters can be used to time in and out of shopping cart activity and can report the number of feet in carts returned which can be used to estimate the total number of carts returned which equates to a certain amount of points.

The rewards will be logged into the system under the 'rewards' section, to which when an employee has the requisite amount of points, they may 'buy' a reward with the points accrued to which the system removes the points from the account and tracks the transaction through the employee ID number. In organizations that use this system, the employee ID number can be transferred from one organization to the next allowing the new organization to see the activity of the employee at the previous organization.

Core components of the solution / how they are interrelated

Employee ID Number - ID cards/bracelets/manual input
Systems IT integration to individual organizational processes
Software and programs specialization to the employee job description with co-integration into the system matrix providing embedded interoperability within the system.

Organizations must integrate organizational activity into a system that is located on the network available on the organization's intranet. Accessing the intranet via employee user ID automatically logs an employee onto the system. The system acts as a more evasive yet direct mode of organizational interaction at all levels. The system can also faciitate games between organizational members, such as chess. For example: A player makes a move when one has some time to make a decision (a small break). The employee responds when a moment arises on their end. The game can take a week to finish, if the organization is busy, and therefore can be saved.

Customer service employees often have to interface with customers directly and generally must work early morning or evening shifts to accomodate shopping demand. The motivation to perform at a high level may be lacking, given the 8 am shift and the cold weather coupled with traffic and congestion. Understandably, customer service employees do need to be on time, and therefore, motivation should be directed at rewarding employees for being early to their shift via administering points.

Practical Impact

In practice, the hack would provide the opportunity for employees to share in the wealth of the company. Instead of being a wage slave and not earning a penny more for productivity or quality, the employee can buttress the regular salary with a bonus received via the reward system. Or instead, an employee can use the points to redeem additional rewards such as paid time off, etc. Companies can choose whichever way to expense based under GAAP or IFRS.

Some employee attitudes would change to the point of not seeing corporations as inherently evil, but instead, as purveyors of economic opportunity offering to share in the revenue pie. Motivating employees at all levels also provides opportunities for intrapreneurial activity. Additionally, attitudes change because now employees have an outlet in which to propose an idea where the organization votes on the feasibility of the idea within the organization. If an employee votes 'no', they must explain, why.

First Steps

A quick and dirty experiment would be to survey the organization and determine the response and adaptability of the organization in integrating the system. If the survey indicates the employee base is accepting and readily capable of accepting a more autonomous work-life balance, then ostensibly the system will work.

The technology investment into the system is not inherently testable unless a prototype is developed with the necessary software already integrated into the platform.

Credits

Vidia Ramdeen

You need to register in order to submit a comment.