Ways to Improve Employee Motivation, Morale & Performance

Posted October 23rd, 2023

-from Inc.

As long as you make sure toxic employees don’t spoil the effect.

When I was a shop-floor employee (regardless of what I’ve done since, still the most formative period of my professional life), for a time I was part of the most productive crew in our 1,000-employee facility. While most crews were separated by fractions of a percent, we typically outran other crews by at least 10 percent.

Unsurprisingly, we were resented at least in part because we were also coddled and protected. (Except in terms of wages; evidently, the company had no understanding of Google’s power-law rule regarding superstar pay.)

Until Doug left to work for a power company, and Mike was assigned to take his place.

Then the other teams licked their competitive chops. Mike was slow. He wasn’t a team player. He was widely considered sullen and argumentative. We were screwed.

Except we weren’t. After a momentary dip, we returned to outperforming other teams by double-digit margins.

Proximity Matters …

Surprising? Not really, especially since a Kellogg School of Management study found that sitting within 25 feet of a high performer improves employee performance by 15 percent. (While the study involved “office” jobs, the premise clearly extends to other forms of work.)

The impact is particularly powerful when a relatively poor performer is moved close to an outstanding performer. If you’re fast and I’m slow, I’ll speed up when I sit near you. If you’re accurate and I’m sloppy, my accuracy will improve. And here’s the thing: My proximity won’t make you slower or less accurate.

According to the researchers:

The beautiful part of it is that when we put these people together, they’re not going to materially suffer on the area of strength. They’re only going to improve on their area of weakness.

With one caveat. Move a toxic employee — not relatively poor, but toxic — close to high performers and their performance may suffer. In that case, the study determined employee performance declined by 30 percent.

That’s backed up by a Harvard Business School study that found that while hiring a superstar (defined as a “top 1 percent” employee) would save the average company $5,303, firing a toxic employee (defined as “a worker who engages in behavior harmful to an organization, including either its property or people”) would save the average company $12,489 in decreased productivity as a result of low morale.

… And Keeps Mattering

Positive spillover takes about a month. That was true in our case; it took Mike a couple of weeks to rise to our collective level.

On the flip side, the researchers found that while toxic spillover happens almost immediately, the impact goes away just as quickly once a toxic employee is moved or removed.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that both positive and negative spillover are fleeting. While I might learn a few things from sitting near you that will improve my performance, still: Move one of us away, and my productivity is likely to fall back to its previous level. (That also happened a year later, when Mike was moved to another shift.)

So what can you do?

First, recognize that every employee brings different skills and attitudes. Your goal isn’t to ensure every employee is great; your goal is to ensure that as a team your employees can collectively be great.

So take a step back and consider what really matters. What are the most important skills or attributes a great employee needs to succeed in their position? Maybe one is attitude. Or interpersonal skills. Or teamwork. Or speed, or accuracy. Or a specific skill set.

Then be intentional about where you place people, whether physically or on teams. Mix and match people on the basis of what you decided really matters: Move a lower performer closer to a high performer, or move a high performer closer to a few lower performers.

Science says proximity alone should make a measurable difference.

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