27 June 2008

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Tips for Team Members
Motivating Team Members in an Insecure Job Market

You are in the development phase of a project and upper management announces that development jobs might be moved to another country in a few months. How do you motivate team members to continue working hard when their jobs might be lost?

The question addresses the reality of life in the contemporary business environment, where the pressure on companies to perform at top efficiencies and at low process costs has made job security a thing of the past.

With this reality in mind, let’s look at three of the many potential responsibilities of the project manager:  

1. Know the motivators of each team member
2. Know the group motivation that unites the members into a team
3. Make team members aware of how their jobs might be affected if the company begins to outsource

This Tips for Team Members topic was inspired by a submission to the Community Post Suggestion Box by Neelima Kulkarni, PMP, who is based in New Jersey, USA. Six of his 17 years in IT have been spent as a project manager.

Remember that people join teams for a variety of reasons, including security, status, self-esteem, affiliation and a yearning for achievement. It is important that you make clear to team members that they should strive for those goals but also understand there are only so many factors they can control on the job.

Potential outsourcing is something team members can’t control. You must acknowledge and discuss with the team all news about outsourcing so they can share their feelings and place the issue in the open.

Outsourcing should be treated like anything else that might impact the success of the project. Identify risks associated with it and develop mitigation strategies. It is important for you to facilitate discussion of the issue but also avoid trying to explain the reason for an outsourcing decision, which is the responsibility of senior management. 

Deal with outsourcing like all other business issues that could impact the project.
 
The most important thing you must do is to maintain the focus on actions needed to make the project succeed.

Your example will help team members focus on those things that they can control rather than those they can’t. You can help them strengthen their personal leadership skills.

If maintained, your focus on the job at hand can be extremely effective and beneficial to team members. Your efforts can demonstrate to others that team members, despite potential news that could impact their job security, achieved excellence and were united.

You can’t control the future. However, your actions and behavior on the job can influence how well team members perform on the job today.

Thanks to Brian R. King, P.Eng, PMP, for contributing this tip for teams. Mr. King is president of Millennium 3 Inc. Training and Consulting, which is driven to help businesses, government and associations improve productivity in leadership and organizational development.  In January 2008 he was appointed CEO and president of LEI – Lafleche Environmental Inc. He is a PMI Global Registered Education Provider and was a PMI SeminarsWorld^® 2007 instructor.  He welcomes your questions or comments on this tip.