MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 106 / MEANING

KEEP THEM AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE THEY SERVE

Let people produce the service. Never let them meet its beneficiaries.

Keep employees separated from customers, patients, users, and other people affected by their work. Route all reactions through filtered dashboards and executive summaries. Direct contact might give them ideas about changing the process.

THE MECHANISM

Human impact obscured by removing contact with the people served.

Primary: MEANINGWORTHBELONGING
RATIONALE
Removing beneficiary contact keeps attention on process compliance rather than on consequences that may be difficult to standardize.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
Employees can describe the workflow in detail and the human result in aggregate.
COMMON FAILURE
Creating credible line of sight to beneficiaries and consequences where appropriate so task significance is experienced rather than merely stated.
THE UNFORTUNATE PART

Evidence, with limitations.

Claim

Task significance and contact with beneficiaries can increase perceived social impact and, under some conditions, improve persistence, dedication and performance.

Evidence

Field experiments found task-significance interventions increased performance and helping outcomes in several settings, with perceived social impact and social worth among the mechanisms examined.

Scientific boundary: Contact with beneficiaries can increase task significance under particular conditions; it is not guaranteed to increase performance in every job.

Sources

These references offer context, not a completed review or a test of this instruction.

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