CorpComms Magazine

 When directors at Orange realised they were struggling to get employees on the business side to feel inspired at work, they decided it was time to take action.

'We have quite disparate teams in the marketing area on the business side at Orange,' says Jo Cooper, talent manager at the mobile phone group. 'Being on the business side of the group, it can sometimes be hard to bring across the life of the Orange brand.'

So last year Orange decided to hold an off-site, day-long meeting for its marketing teams - some 50 people - in a bid to gee them up. It brought in Kevin Duncan, whose company Expert Advice offers management, pitching and other business-improving advice to companies, to inject some inspiration.

Duncan encouraged the teams to ask questions of their managers and collaborate with each other. 'He told them they have the right to talk about things like meetings, for example, and to ask whether they attend too many,' says Cooper. 'More generally, he emphasised the importance of talking to each other, and understanding that everyone is going through the same things.'

'If you have 30 things to do on a checklist, the chances are that you will not have asked why you need to do 28 of them,' Duncan explains. 'This is about filtering out the crap, and being able to ask your boss why you have to do something. This is beneficial for workers as well as for companies, because companies will then be less likely to become involved in lots of pointless programmes.'

Duncan's contention is that this wasting of time and energy within companies - sitting in endless meetings, getting engaged in pointless programmes - is what demotivates people to the extent that they don't even feel able to challenge the decisions that put them there in the first place.

'I think many firms have no idea how to manage people,' says Duncan, who offers motivational coaching in sessions ranging from a one-off half-hour talk with a large group to a series of 10 weekly one-on-one sessions.

According to Cooper, Duncan's speech and interaction with members of Orange's marketing teams, encouraging them to feel their input is important, really affected the employees. 'I would say it completely changed the mood of the day, and the afternoon was much more collaborative,' she says. 'I think people really did bring that collaborative attitude back to work with them afterwards, too.'

Culture shock

Many motivational coaches will tell you the same thing - office culture can be a real downer when it comes to exciting and enthusing employees.

There is a wide range of activities that lay claim to the title 'motivational coaching', from bringing in a celebrity or sports star for a pep talk to tailoring three-month-long training courses for your staff. It is also possible to give your staff an away day (or weekend) learning how to build rafts and helping each other through assault courses.

HBOS recently sent members of its technology team - which is spread out in different offices across the UK - on a treasure hunt in Fife, Scotland in Mini Coopers and helicopters. The staff came back feeling invigorated and saying they had benefited from the teamwork with colleagues they usually only spoke to on the phone.

If you really want to make your staff rush into the office bubbling with enthusiasm, however, a more integrated approach might be better. Using a one-off approach to enthuse staff is a waste of time, says Nick Simmonds, motivation coach from communications consultancy Think Feel Know. 'If you do a one-off Daley Thompson-style speech, you might as well burn your money,' he adds. 'I always think it is ironic that management brings in some celebrity to gee up the staff. Surely it should be management that does this?'

Motivational methods

A motivation coach will first establish exactly which problems a company wishes to solve, and determine what the company wishes to achieve. He or she will then offer group sessions, individual coaching, one-off workshops, or a course of sessions.

Simmonds' approach is to teach clients the importance of tuning the cultural side of the business to the company's commercial aims. 'Any business that focuses purely on commercial outcome will suffer from cultural problems like lack of organisation and cohesion,' he says. 'Likewise, any organisation that focuses only on building a good culture will suffer from a lack of commercial outcomes.'

One way to marry the two is to devise key performance indicators (KPIs) for the cultural side of your business as well as the commercial, advises Simmonds. For instance, Think Feel Know has a 'learning' KPI under which each member of staff should undertake 12 days of training each year.

The group's 'love' KPI encourages staff to take on at least one not-for-profit project each year - for example, providing consultancy or coaching to a charity or a business that is in some way engaged in promoting a better world or community, and which otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it. The 'family' KPI ensures spouses and partners are invited to at least one company conference each year.

'You can measure whether you are creating the culture you want,' says Simmonds. 'That in itself is really motivational. The point is that it is not top-down - everyone gets an opportunity to create the culture he or she wants.'

Give 'em what they want

What is most important is finding out what people actually want and then acting on it, says motivational consultant Nigel Risner, who holds workshops for chief executives on how to motivate their staff.

'I teach them how to be effective zookeepers,' he says. 'I also teach them to find out what people's needs are, because meeting those needs is the only reason they come to work. When people start to have their personal needs met, they are more likely to stop being so stroppy.

'For example, my PA wants to be at the bus stop to meet her children at 4.20 pm every day, and on the vast majority of days, she is. As a result, at 4.10 pm she is not worrying about the kids, and at 4.30 pm she is back in the office doing a great job for me.'

Risner claims poor communications and misunderstandings are the main reasons behind 90 percent of all staff dismissals - and this is where the majority of companies are going wrong when it comes to staff motivation, says Stephen Ferrey, founder of Motivational Coaching.

'If I get a call out of the blue from a company, it is usually because it has a problem that needs to be fixed, and it is usually a communication problem - people misunderstanding each other,' he says. 'This is about understanding other people's perspectives, so it becomes less of a blame game.'

On the other hand, Ferrey adds, it is also about challenging people's perspectives, so that they no longer simply say 'We've always done it that way' or 'We can't do that' as an automatic response.

One client recently hired Ferrey to help with a disciplinary matter. He helped management see where communications had gone wrong and made one individual understand how he was failing to fit into the rest of the team.

People power

All of it, says Ferrey, is about motivating people. His work with the Hewett School in Norwich, where children come from disadvantaged backgrounds, underlines how important this can be. Yvonne Burdett, learning coordinator at the school, says the motivational coaching programme used for year 11 students (aged 14) is extremely beneficial.

'Our school is in an area where the children have very low aspirations,' Burdett explains. 'Stephen comes in for a one-day event, once a year, called Road to Success, which is all about showing the students that they can do things if they really want to and telling them that they are good enough. It is very important for them to hear that from someone outside the school.'

While this is a more extreme case, the same principles apply to the corporate realm. 'Motivating people maximises the potential of your workforce; the biggest corporate expense is the wages,' Ferrey points out. 'By creating an environment in which people can motivate themselves, you will be getting the best out of them.'

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