I’ve done two days now of my level 7 Leadership course at Nottingham Business School and on day 1 one of the things that was discussed at length was hygiene factors in human resources.
Hygiene factors are defined as factors which would not secure an employee in a new job but factors which would encourage them to leave their existing job, if left unattended to.
Consider wages and paying on time.
Time and time again surveys of thousands of individuals in the workplace, place level of income (above an appropriate level) as far down the list of relevant factors important to their work.
Generally speaking income comes in at about 5th.
Regardless of these findings time and time again employers ignore it and think that they can overlook hygiene factors.
What they seem to forget is, once you have a flat screen tele, a slightly better flat screen tele doesn’t make you that much happier.
There is a good argument to say that once you have a flat screen tele in your bedroom it makes you less happy.
Think about it for a minute though, what do you want from your work?
I want to feel safe and by safe I mean have a team working around me and beside me who will look after me as I look after them. People who look out for me and understand that when things are tough we pull together and help each other so it’s less tough for all of us.
I want to watch the people I work with grow and get better, be happy and feel secure.
I want to watch their lives improve. I want to see them get married or have partners, kids or explore things that they have never seen before.
In short, I want their lives to be good, at least what they define as good.
The first thing as an employer I have responsibility for is I have to get the hygiene factors right, pay their wages on time and fix the leaks in the roof so to speak.
One of the greatest hygiene factors is legitimacy of authority.
The rules today need to be pretty much the same as the rules were yesterday and everybody should believe they will be pretty much be the same tomorrow; that should be for everybody.
I use to work with someone in a previous life who was a complete pr*ck. This person was horrible to the staff that they worked with through the whole year, but on a Christmas night out they’d put a credit card behind the bar and watch the staff wreck it.
That isn’t how hygiene factors work. That is the opposite of hygiene factors.
Blog post number: 1563