Professional summary
Brooks Carder, PhD Consultant in employee motivation/employee engagement
Employee motivation and engagement is a function of the management system and the organizational culture. Analysis of the management system, and changing the management system if necessary, is a relatively straightforward task. Understanding the culture, how it was formed, and what maintains it, is more difficult. And if there is an issue with the culture, then new procedures, new rules, new exhortations, and even new incentives will not be effective. And there is a massive amount of evidence that employee motivation and engagement is driven principally by cultural issues. Plus, as work becomes more complex, culture becomes ever more important. Dr. Carder has over 20 Read more
Brooks Carder, PhD Consultant in employee motivation/employee engagement
Employee motivation and engagement is a function of the management system and the organizational culture. Analysis of the management system, and changing the management system if necessary, is a relatively straightforward task. Understanding the culture, how it was formed, and what maintains it, is more difficult. And if there is an issue with the culture, then new procedures, new rules, new exhortations, and even new incentives will not be effective. And there is a massive amount of evidence that employee motivation and engagement is driven principally by cultural issues. Plus, as work becomes more complex, culture becomes ever more important. Dr. Carder has over 20 years of experience in measuring the effects of both management system and culture on employee performance. The process he has developed leads to dramatic changes in culture and ultimately to improved performance.
Dr. Carder’s improvement process follows Deming’s cycle of plan do study act. Planning has always been facilitated by the existence of relevant data. Typically Dr. Carder’s process includes a survey or needs assessment. Depending on the challenge this could be a formal survey or a set of informal interviews. Based on the data, the needs of the client, and the business situation, a plan is made and carried out on a small scale. The results are studied, leading either to a modification of the plan or rollout to the entire organization.
While Dr. Carder is a scientist, he is also an experienced business person. He is dealing with business problems, not academic problems, so this business knowledge is crucial. As a junior faculty member at UCLA his research included studies of the neurophysiology of motivation, the operation of incentives, and intrinsic motivation. As a businessman, he led a high-performing company for 10 years. As a consultant he has solved a wide variety of business problems, ranging from improving the quality and process yield in the manufacture of hard disks in Silicon Valley, to the improvement of safety performance in manufacturing industries, to the successful marketing of food products to consumers, to the development of an employee recognition program at IBM. His clients include world-leading companies in addition to IBM, such as: GE, ExxonMobil, Abbott Laboratories, and Bayer, as well as a number of small and mid-size companies.
Dr. Carder is the author of 2 books and over 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including two in Science, the most prestigious of scientific journals. His first book, Measurement Matters; How Effective Assessment Drives Business and Safety Performance was published by the American Society for Quality, and was reprinted in India. His 1992 paper on the Theory and Practice of Employee Recognition is still cited.
His education includes a BA from Yale, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
