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