James,
Is there evidence that WMF has a worrisome "talent retention problem"? Gayle
seems to think that the answer is generally no. If there is evidence to the
contrary that has more weight than anecdotal Glassdoor reviews, I would be
interested in seeing that evidence.
I would distinguish between motivation and performance. Highly motivated people
may perform poorly and/or perform in ways that are inconsistent with the
organization's interests. Consider the cases of financial professionals who
were so highly motivated that they were willing to risk criminal prosecutions
and serious harm or outright demise of their organizations. I get emails every
week from the SEC and almost all of them seem to include announcements of legal
actions brought by the SEC against people who were highly motivated and made
decisions that are questionable at best. Also consider the case of someone who
may be highly financially motivated to get a degree in engineering but lacks
the math skills to do so. Very highly motivated people may be unable to achieve
their performance objectives or may take significant, potentially illegal and
unethical risks to achieve those objectives.
Looking mainly at the abstracts, I think the final study that you linked is the
most relevant of the set to the discussion here. In that case a financial
incentive was added in addition to whatever other incentives already existed
for the reviewers to complete their work. But I would argue that "doing the
same work faster" is more analogous to the rule-based work, rather than the
creative work, discussed in the video that Erik linked.
I am not opposed to WMF offering performance bonuses - money, recognition, PTO,
greater discretion, conferences, training, desirable assignments - but in
general I think you seem to be overstating the nature of WMF's issues with
retaining personnel. Also, I would distinguish between incentives to perform
and incentives to remain with the organization.
On the accountability side, I do think that there's room for improvement, and
the employee survey data seem to agree with that. I support the consideration
of making personnel changes if important targets are not met or issues do not
receive adequate responses. (I am currently concerned about the Board, as I
have mentioned elsewhere). But that's a different issue than the alleged
"talent retention problem" for paid staff.
Pine
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