Destination: Work - Thriving in a Tough Economy by Tapping Into the Discretionary Effort of Your Employees, Ross Reck, Ph.D. & Harry Paul
Monday, May 11, 2009 at 10:12PM Has your company’s bottom line taken a serious hit because of today’s lousy economic climate? Has your company tried to fix the situation by undergoing a round or two of layoffs, only to see your productivity plummet because of reduced morale and your better performing employees jumping ship to other companies or surfing the internet for job postings on your time? If so, would you like to turn your situation around instantly—as in overnight? If you think something like this is impossible, think again. The secret for turning things around is to tap into the discretionary effort of your employees—get them excited about coming to work and applying every bit of energy, creativity and passion they have toward performing their jobs instead of doing only what they have to do to in order to stay employed. How important is discretionary effort to the success of a business? Towers Perrin looked at 50 global companies over a 12 month period and found a direct relationship between discretionary effort and company performance. They found that the companies that received high levels of discretionary effort from their employees had a 19 percent increase in operating income and nearly a 28 percent increase in earnings per share.