Author: Geetha Rani
Motivational methods in Space is a critical factor in academic and professional performance. In the field of aerospace, it is particularly necessary due to the difficulty of the subject.
Today, in the New Space industry, there is a lot of pressure to manage the supply chain. The rapidly developing industry with short deadlines and small missions with the worldwide shortage in electronic components while maintaining space grade quality standards has increased complexity in manufacturing. The employees tirelessly work to deal with setbacks, put out the fires, and solve current problems. Therefore, it is important to identify motivational methods in the Space Industry that enhance the motivation of aerospace professionals and help them to persevere through the challenging workload.
Different methods and techniques to motivate space industry employees:
Offer personal enrichment program:
Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of individual employees in the team to better understand the strength and weaknesses of the team. Depending on the individual employee’s field of interest and the direction of growth of the team offer courses and workshops for the development of the individual. Linking the interests of the individual employee back to the overall goals of your organization is the key. This would be a win- win situation for the company and the employee.
Implement Knowledge Aware Approach:
The Knowledge Aware approach is a coherent and comprehensive enterprise-level Knowledge Management strategy and technique. This method involves continuously capturing standards, best practices, lessons learned, methods, techniques, requirements, employee knowledge, and other resources, broken down into digestible bite-sized pieces, and it is delivered to the right person when and where it’s needed. Since knowledge is delivered when and where it’s needed, employees won’t have to waste time manually searching for and sharing knowledge. This approach creates a more effective and efficient organization and more reliable outputs.
Codification:
Perusing codification strategy where different ways are developed to codify, store, and reuse knowledge. Knowledge is codified using a “people-to-documents” approach: it is extracted from the person who developed it, made independent of that person, and reused for various purposes. This helps in time reduction to onboard new employees and motivate them to work methodically.
Providing meaningful feedback:
It is important for the managers to provide specific, targeted feedback to show the employees that their work is recognized and is important. Same goes with constructive feedback on areas of improvement: the feedback needs to be personalized and actionable. The golden ratio of 5:1 could be a good strategy to give feedback – five positive takeaways to one negative piece of feedback, to overwhelming the employees with criticism
Follow through on promises:
To the employee, a manager is a representative of the company. It is important for the managers to be mindful of the promises they make. Not delivering the promises means losing trust in a manager can mean losing trust in the whole organization.
There is no magical, one-size-fits-all formula for keeping employees motivated. Maintaining motivation in employee is an ongoing task filled with opportunities to experiment and learn what works (and what doesn’t work) for the team. These are just a few approaches to keep the employees motivated, happy and energize.
References:
- Knowledge Management (KM) Resources. – NASA Knowledge Management KM resources.
- 8 Steps to Implementing a Knowledge Management Program at Your Organization. – Robert Simmons, Mary Davis.
- What’s Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge? by Morten T. Hansen, Nitin Nohria, and Thomas J. Tierney
- Motivational impact of active learning methods in aerospace engineering students. By Daniel López-Fernández, JoséMiguelEzquerro, JacoboRodríguez, JeffPorter, VictoriaLapuerta
- Six Strategies to Maintain Employee Motivation. By Rebecca Skilbeck.
