David Sirota, co-author of "The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want," thinks too many managers squelch employee enthusiasm by using bureaucratic or punitive measures that should be reserved for a troublesome few.  The author along with Louis Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer found that firms where employee morale is high, like Intuit and Barron's, typically outperform their competitors.  Their findings are based on the results of 2.5 million employee surveys takens since 1994.

Sirota says managers should rely on common sense principles that enable workers to take pride in their work.  Sirota found that all employees generally want 3 things at work:  to be treated fairly, to have a sense of achievement from their work, and to have camaraderie.  In his research, these 3 traits are universal without much difference among generations, between sexes, across countires, etc.

First employees want equity.  They want to know they are getting paid competitively.  They want benefits and job security.  They want to be treated with respect,  No matter what people say, pay IS very important.  It is vital that an employee doesn't feel underpaid or that the company is nickeling and diming him or her.

Secondly, employees want to be proud of their work for the organization.  They want to work for people they are feel good about.  Third, people want to have both friends at work AND feel they are working well together as a team.  This provides a great source of satisfaction.

The question shouldn't be how do you motivate employees, but rather how do you keep managers from destroying motivation?  For one thing, it is hard to be enthusiastic about an organization that treats you as expendable.  Take Southwest Airlines, for example.  After 9/11, they put their money where their mouth was by saying, "We will take a hit in our stock price and not lay off anybody."

Another demotivating factor is conflicts across the organization, such as a conflict between IT and their internal customers.  People don't come to work to fight.

One problem observed especially in companies with large numbers of blue-collar workers or back-office operations (i.e. call centers) is treating the entire workforce as if they are the 5% who don't want to work.  Such companies set up rules and punitive measures for the entire work population.  Such companies are trying so hard to be consistent that they consistently treat everybody as a child or criminal, which is very destructive.

Workers want to be proud of the quality of the work they and their company do.  The pressure comes from the top tiers who are simply looking at the bottom line.  Laying off people should be management's last resort, not the first thing they do to improve the numbers.  Toyota has had great success with the concept of self-managed teams.  This antithesis of top-down management is satisfying to the workers and reduces the need for bureaucracy because people are managing themselves.

Recognition is very important.  Employees want to be appreciated for good work.  Organization-wide awards should be like the Nobel Prize, where peers are involved in selecting the individuals who receive the award for outstanding achievement, not day-to-day work.  Traditional merit pay systems with an appraisal and pay increase tend to be quite negative.  Research shows that a system such as "gain sharing" where a group of workers judges its performance over time is more effective.  For example, if productivity increases 20% and the workforce increases only 10%, there is greater efficiency.  This positive result should be shared with the workers 50% and management 50%.  This boosts productivity and morale tremendously.