In our last blog we emphasized the importance of bridging the gap between home and the workplace and building trusting employee–manager relationships in order to enhance employee commitment and motivation. We noted that a wide gap between how an employee feels at home and how they feel at work, combined with unhealthy relationships between them and their Manager, makes employees lose interest in going to work. The workplace becomes simply a place Employees go to earn an income and pay their bills, rather than a place where they feel valued and their needs are met.
In this blog, we suggest some strategies and everyday practices that Management can adopt in order to bridge the gap between home and work, strengthen employee–management relationships and improve employee motivation and commitment.
Rethinking the way we design jobs
Let us start by considering how people interact with their daily tasks at home. On a typical day, a person might wash clothes, prepare a meal, clean their living space, do some gardening, and perhaps even do their nails or hair. They engage in a variety of tasks, each of which may require diverse knowledge and skills.
Now compare this with the way some jobs are designed in formal workplaces. A bank teller, for example, might spend the whole day receiving and paying out money, entering transactions into the banking system, and balancing their accounts at the end of the day. An accounts assistant might spend much of the day entering figures into an accounting system and generating reports. We could go on and on.
The tasks people perform in the home environment are often diverse and varied, whereas tasks in the workplace can be repetitive and monotonous. At home, people may draw on a wide range of skills and knowledge, while a narrowly designed job may require an employee to use only a small proportion of their capabilities. At home, people may also work collaboratively with other members of the household, while at work they may spend much of their time completing tasks on their own.
It is therefore not surprising that employees working in highly repetitive and narrowly defined jobs may become bored, experience exhaustion, lose their sense of commitment to the organization, and become less motivated.
One response to this challenge is job enrichment
Job enrichment involves redesigning work so that employees have opportunities to perform a variety of tasks, exercise greater autonomy, take ownership of their work, and see the connection between their individual contribution and the broader goals of the organization.
Human Resource Managers should therefore encourage senior management to ask: Are we making full use of the knowledge, skills, interests, and potential of our employees, or are we limiting them to a very narrow set of repetitive tasks?
Job enrichment does not simply mean giving employees more work. Rather, it means giving them more variety, responsibility, autonomy, and opportunities to learn and contribute.
Our experience at Washarika
Take Washarika, for example. Our day guard does not only perform guarding duties. They also do some gardening and are encouraged to wash clients’ cars, from which they might earn a healthy tip. If they have the knowledge, skills, or interest, they can also perform some DJ roles or take on other appropriate responsibilities. They are therefore not limited to a single, narrowly defined role.
Our housekeepers have suggested that they would prefer to work as a team rather than each being permanently assigned to a specific set of rooms. We have also given them greater freedom to determine when and how they prepare rooms and when they complete other critical tasks such as ironing. When necessary, they may also assist the chef in the kitchen.
We deliberately ensure that employees acquire some knowledge about the different sections of the business. The intention is not simply to have employees perform additional tasks. Rather, we want them to understand the hospitality business as a whole and begin to imagine opportunities for learning, personal development, and professional growth within the industry.
This purposeful and intentional approach to work has helped us create a highly motivated and committed workforce. It has also contributed to Washarika having one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the industry.
Creating a sense of ownership
In addition to job enrichment, we have introduced several practices and fostered workplace norms that encourage employees to contribute directly to business growth. The objective is to help employees develop a sense of ownership—not necessarily ownership in the legal sense, but a feeling that “this is our business, and what I do matters.”
For example, the barman, chef, and guest relations manager each maintain independent records of their unit’s performance. They can see sales trends and contribute ideas about strategies that could improve performance and grow their particular areas of the business.
We also hold cross-unit meetings where we discuss how the kitchen, bar, rooms, and other parts of the business complement one another. This helps employees understand that their work does not exist in isolation.
Reducing unnecessary hierarchy
We also discourage the excessive use of job titles. Instead, staff are encouraged to refer to one another by whatever names they prefer. This helps reduce unnecessary hierarchy and creates a degree of informality similar to what one might experience in a home environment.
Even seemingly minor practices can have an impact. For example, Directors and Managers also eat the same staff food. This may appear insignificant, but it creates an important form of accountability: the people responsible for managing the business experience the same meals as everyone else. The chef therefore has a direct reason to maintain a high standard of staff meals.
Just as importantly, we encourage informality and friendliness. We crack friendly jokes, interact with one another openly, and try to foster a culture of healthy familiarity and mutual respect.
These practices do not mean that standards are abandoned or that accountability disappears. Rather, they demonstrate that a workplace can have structure and accountability while still being human, friendly, and respectful.
The result: commitment without excessive supervision
The result of these practices is that our staff are highly motivated and committed to the organization. They understand the business, they contribute ideas, they work across different functions, and they have opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills. Perhaps most importantly, they work with minimal supervision.
We don’t always succeed and we don’t always win. However, we are contented that we always strive towards living true to these core principles.