The Key to Success is Employee Motivation

Companies with motivated employees produce better returns for their shareholders, according to a study by the Workplace Research Foundation in cooperation with the University of Michigan.

That won’t come as a surprise to lean advocates, but it is nice to have our faith in lean principles validated by a study.

As described in an article on Forbes.com, the study took place over seven years, from 2001 through 2007, and examined survey data from 3,490 employees at 841 corporations that were listed in the Wall Street Journal 1000--an index of firms that encompasses 98% of U.S. gross domestic product.

One example, according to the article, was what researchers came across at Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group.

One thing they found at Dollar Thrifty was that employees valued being "in the loop," in this case getting to participate in discussions about the surveys and what they meant. When management reached out to make this happen the firm saw its repeat business strengthen and its stock has crushed its peers.

I feel pretty confident in saying that efforts to motivate employees were probably not the only positive attributes of the companies that were studied – particularly since stock prices improve based on financial results, not just the levels of employee motivation. This is probably a correlation rather than a cause-and-effect relationship.

Most likely, the top companies in the study also actually listened to what their employees said and sought to improve their operations by implementing employee suggestions.

Are your employees motivated?