This week at Cullen Scholefield we’re busily dashing around in the mood for celebration! December is not only the time of year for colourful jumpers, party hats, general good cheer and hectic year end activities, but it’s also when 129 of our candidates stand up, take a bow and pat themselves on the back for a job very well done; for they celebrate completion of their CIPD and ILM qualifications.

 We look forward to seeing many of them this Friday at the Annual Awards Presentation at our usual venue, the Holiday Inn Oxford Circus, London and we also suspect there’ll be many smaller celebrations going on around the world amongst those candidates who can’t attend.

 As we celebrate their achievement, we also think back to last year’s Roll of Honour and the many who have no doubt used their well earned qualifications to good effect in the last twelve months. This got us thinking about the crucial role of motivating factors in organisations, for professional qualifications must surely rank highly here.

 Something that often arises immediately when thinking about employee reward and motivation are of course levels of pay and financial incentives. While this traditional focus will never cease to be justified to a point, it has been increasingly recognised that it cannot and should not be the only way of creating a happy employee who is properly engaged with their organisation.

 As two examples, think of the now classic case of Ford and the more recent focus on the changing nature of the top factors motivating employees.

 Firstly, Ford; to create his world changing Model T car at the start of the 20th Century, Henry Ford had to convince employees to change from a long established start to finish, piece by piece approach, to the modern idea of the repetitive, yet effective, production line.

 Doing this removed to a large degree, employee engagement – they no longer had the satisfaction of lovingly crafting their product from start to finish, but simply carried out their assigned task as black Model T after black Model T rolled by to destinations near and far.

 How did Henry convince them to do this? Partly by hiking pay levels ($5 for an 8 hour day in 1914 was roughly $2 above average), but partly by putting in place a now rather old fashioned and somewhat invasive (extending into home life) Welfare approach to employee reward, that can be seen as an early precursor to more modern incentives.

 More recently, the second example shows that a more nuanced approach has arisen, with pay seeing a downward trend in importance. One study carried out at Bradford University, starkly illustrates this. From 2008, to 2010, fiscal reward went from being the factor of secondary importance, to only the fourth:

In the previous decade, it had fallen for the first time from the number one spot.

Other work backs this up, including a recently released ILM study. Charles Elvin, their Chief Executive, has said: “In the past year UK companies have collectively spent an astronomical amount on financial incentives for their staff. But this report is telling us there are far more effective and cost-effective ways to motivate people. These include giving regular feedback, allowing people to have autonomy in a role, the opportunity to innovate and improved office environments.”

Indeed, in a recent Forbes article, Glenn Lopis doesn’t specifically include financial recompense, listing trustworthy leadership as his number one motivator.

Cullen Scholefield always believes that it is essential to recognise our people’s achievements and our candidates’ achievements – it’s just the way we are.

 So as we move towards Christmas, this is surely a message to bear in mind – does your organisation make enough use of the other motivators described above, or is financial reward alone still front and centre?