"Personnel Best"
Providing your team members with incentives is just one way to help improve their performance. PMW talks to four motivational experts.
Ever wondered how to get the best out of your people? Perhaps your chief mechanic is getting overly nervous during refuelling, costing the team vital seconds, or maybe a string of mechanical failures means that morale has hit an all-time low in the engineering department?
Meet John Sylvester, director of Performance and Motivation Management. Established 40 years ago, P&MM aims to “deliver innovative, exciting, and effective solutions that improve the performance of employees”.
Help comes from a “proven, four-step formula” that can be applied to ensure team managers get the best out of their personnel – even if they are at a low ebb.
“The start point is for the team to be realistic in the objectives it is pursuing,” says Sylvester. So no point aiming for six podiums this year if you finished last in the constructors’ race the previous season!
Step two would see team bosses establish a reward scheme in synch with the company structure: “There needs to be a bonus and recognition system in place when the achievements in step one are met by the team.” Sylvester says some form of recognition is essential for the program to work. “Whether it’s a paid bonus, a bottle of wine or a pat on the back from the CEO, what’s important is for the team and individual to be recognized for meeting outlined targets.”
Step three focuses on communication, which, says Sylvester, is a part of management that is often over looked as, “there are always other things to do”. He adds: “Many employers don’t communicate as well as they should. Communication should not just be about the business, but also how a mechanic is doing against the objectives in step two.”
And the fourth and final step? “Team managers must remember that if the goals in step two are achieved, the company needs to reward the employee.”
If team managers adopt such a model over a six- to 18-month cycle, Sylvester says he’s confident that team efficiency can be increased by up to a staggering 20 per cent.
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