Motivation beyond money
Why do we work? For most people making a living is the obvious first answer. But is it the last? And are pay and rewards the best way to achieve the much discussed engagement employers are looking for from their people?
Any organisation should be looking at having the right person in the right role for the right reward but how? And again, is that sufficient to engage them?
According to ACAS engagement involves:
Leaders having a vision and an on-going narrative that is good for the organisation and means something to the staff
Leading by example. That is, managers acting with integrity and practising what they preach, and
Line managers who can relate to their staff and have the skills to manage and get the best out of them
Listening to those on the front line who know what works and what doesn't.
All of this matters because an engaged employee is far more likely to be happy in their work, care about your clients, stay loyal to you and thereby deliver consistent results for both the organisation and its clients. We can refer to this as situational engagement.
If we really are going to have the right person in the right role however, we also need to consider task-based engagement. According to Kenneth Thomas* intrinsic motivators are those factors which lead people to be engaged in their work for its own sake, rather than being externally motivated i.e. by pay and other rewards.
The four intrinsic motivators are:
Meaningfulness - the feeling that one is pursuing a worthy work purpose, which is worth one's time and energy
Autonomy - the sense that one is able to make one's own decisions and act out of one's own understanding of the work
Competence - the feeling that one is performing work activities well, and to a high quality
Progress - the sense that one is actually achieving the work purpose.
Much of this dovetails with some of the findings from the huge body of work by Sir Michael Marmot** which found a correlation between poor health, particularly the risk of coronary heart disease and depression, and low control at work, reduced opportunities for engagement and participation and an unequal exchange of reward for effort. Food for thought indeed.
If these are new ideas for you, test the intrinsic motivators against your own experience. Consider your own levels of engagement with your current and previous roles and then reflect on how you would measure against the above criteria. Do they help make sense of when and why you have felt the most and the least energised, motivated and satisfied in your work?
Essentially we need to create cultures in which leaders lead, listen, act with integrity and reward effort fairly. If we can then bear in mind the intrinsic motivators when building teams, designing personal development plans etc., we will be even more likely to develop a loyal, engaged workforce who bring more of themselves to work and build similarly engaged relationships with your own clients. And who may even enjoy better long term physical and mental health. Win, win, win.
* Intrinsic Motivation at Work (Thomas, K 2009: Berrett-Koehler)
** For an immensely readable summary, see Status Syndrome: How Your Place on the Social Gradient Directly Affects Your Health (2nd edn. Marmot, M 2015: Bloomsbury)
