Last week we took a look at the things that frontline managers can do to make behaviour inefficient, and thereby ensure poor performance from their team.

These factors were originally identified by Thomas Gilbert who trained under the founder of behavioural psychology, B.F. Skinner. I suggested that since these factors lead to lower employee productivity (and inevitably lower business unit performance and profit), we can deduce that they are likely to have a significant impact on employee engagement or motivation.

This week we’ll take a look Gilbert’s model for engineering high performance. And we’ll compare the factors in that model with the key drivers of employee engagement identified through global research.

You’ll remember from last week that Gilbert applied the Skinnerian ABC model to the world of work. This suggested that for adequate performance to occur, several conditions needed to be met. Using the example of walking into a dark room and turning on the light we can break down the components of behaviour as follows:

COMPONENTS OF BEHAVIOUR

Adapted from “Human Performance – Engineering Worthy Performance’ by Thomas F. Gilbert. McGraw-Hill 1978.

From this concept Gilbert developed his “behaviour engineering model”. It looks like this:

THE BEHAVIOUR ENGINEERING MODEL

Adapted from “Human Performance – Engineering Worthy Performance’ by Thomas F. Gilbert. McGraw-Hill 1978.

Let’s now compare the factors identified in this model with the key drivers of employee engagement identified through global research.

Perhaps the largest and most comprehensive study of employee engagement ever was completed by Gallup Inc. The results were published in 12. The Elements of Great Managing.

The key drivers of employee engagement that emerged from the Gallup research are as follows:

• I know what is expected of me at work
• I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right
• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day
• In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work
• My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person
• There is someone at work who encourages my development
• At work, my opinions seem to count
• The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important
• My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work
• I have a best friend at work
• In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress
• This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow

Most, but not all, of these elements appear to be predicted by Gilbert’s behaviour engineering model. It’s not surprising that some are not. Gilbert trained as a behavioural psychologist. The techniques of behavioural psychology refined in the fields of Applied Behavior Analysis and Organizational Behavior Management, are extremely powerful. However, one field of psychology alone cannot explain everything about how people work.

At least one of the elements could be predicted by Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. However, the surprise finding from the Gallup research was the element, “I have a best friend at work.” On reflection though it is perhaps unsurprising. After all, we are social beings.

Let’s take another look at each of the components of behaviour identified by Gilbert and check which of the elements of great managing discovered by Gallup were predicted by his behaviour engineering model.

DATA

I know what is expected of me at work

The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important

In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress

TOOLS

I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right

At work, my opinions seem to count

INCENTIVES

In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work

This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow

KNOWLEDGE

There is someone at work who encourages my development

CAPACITY

At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day

MOTIVES

My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person

That covers most of them. Social learning theory predicts one of the two remaining elements:

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work

As I noted previously, the surprise finding was the element, “I have a best friend at work”.

Any piece of research starts with a hypothesis to be tested. Consequently Gallup, and other researchers of employee engagement, set out to prove or disprove existing models of performance and motivation. Their work completely validated Gilbert’s behaviour engineering model and provides specific performance levers that frontline managers can use to maximise their team performance.