Some companies use fear, some perks, others appreciation

BOSTON, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- A business expert from the Harvard Business School in Boston said companies use fear, perks and appreciation to motivate employees.

Nancy Koehn of Harvard Business School said while some companies are laying people off, reducing benefits and even cutting down on office size, other companies take the opposite view.

Technology companies are well known for offering "perks for scarce engineering talent as a way to recruit and keep them, but there is another view of some companies that really put the employee at the top of their priorities as a way of building business and encouraging satisfied, advocating customers," Koehn told NPR's Money Marketplace.

"If you look at some of the measures around this: employee productivity, turnover, engagement numbers -- those numbers are higher for those companies than for competitors in their respective classes," Koehn added.

"This is all in great contrast to buy low, sell high and eat your workers up to do that. These companies way out perform the DOW, the NASDAQ -- by 8-to-1 ratios in some cases."