When I visited China for the first time and looked out of my hotel window I thought that I could hear the sound of social unrest from side streets nearby. But when I left my hotel and traced the sounds I found something very different. Lined up in front of a barbers shop were a smiling row of uniformed employees enthusiastically chanting in response to their boss’s questions.
This was not blind obedience, but the emanation of a culture where public displays of employee commitment are quite normal and the clear indication of a well run enterprise. As I witnessed more and more of these sessions in other businesses my shock and initial suspicion dwindled away. Here was a deep sense of identification not achieved by a carrot or stick approach, but a deeply held respect between people and a faith in an organization that provides them with employment. In Chinese society employment is not seen as a right, but as a privilege where an employee’s good performance is constantly recognized and poor performance held in check by colleagues.
In the west employee loyalty has no such foundation. Incentive programmes generally have little impact, as remuneration paid is soon perceived as a basic entitlement. If the only loyalty which exists is the sort that can be bought then the organization has failed. Sadly Chinese motivational methods cannot be easily exported, but their underlying logic can be translated. Companies that openly care about employee welfare or encourage charitable acts, sponsor employee sporting teams, encourage retired employees to pop in for lunch or even just have employee of the month awards are at least going some way to building more of a genuine commitment.
Commitment is, of course, a very hard concept to pin down and it certainly cannot be engendered either by laws or company rules. This, for instance, reminds me of the national flag and anthem issue rumbling in several countries around the world. In the Philippines a Bill just approved by the House of Representatives makes it a stringently punishable offence to sing the national anthem “Lupang Hinirang,” without outward enthusiasm. During a visit to Thailand I also found that the national anthem was played in Bangkok’s streets, parks, public buildings and even offices twice a day and everyone is expected at the time to stand still and remain silent.
One of the biggest tasks for HR is finding ways to convert instrumental loyalty to an intrinsic and genuine loyalty in the broader context of societies that encourage skepticism and disrespect for authority. In my experience this is never achievable if management – particularly senior management – is remote and enjoys the conspicuous trappings of success. Wars used to be fought by kings and generals leading troops headlong into battle, then along came Napoleon and leadership was removed to some distant and safe hill overlooking the action.
Going back to China, I have frequently been struck by the way managers and supervisors lead from the front. One evening I visited a park. It was getting dark and had only recently stopped raining. A gang of workers were laying turf. The only way I could tell who was in charge was to notice the person working the hardest, but moving about to keep up the work momentum. It was no enforced labour, just a jovial and well coordinated rush to beat the light. A few days later I returned, the turf was already looking like established grass and there was no signs of the mud or equipment that had littered the site shortly before. It was just a rapid job, well done.