PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Employees’ internal motivation
JimBarnett, chief executive officer of Glint , discusses why we need to start designing our HR and performance practices to unlock the potential of employees’ intrinsicmotivation
T oday, employees have new and social responsibility. The 2020 Edelman trust barometer (www.edelman. com/trustbarometer) shows that 73% of employees expect a prospective employer to offer the opportunity to shape the future of society in a positive way. And 92% say they expect their chief executive officer (CEO) to speak out on issues ranging from income inequality to diversity and expectations of their employers, especially around business ethics training for jobs of the future. Although staff are looking for inspiration and a sense of belonging, more often than not today’s organisations
itself, rather than the deliverable or the reward for finishing it. It’s the feeling of empowerment experienced when getting a chance to handle work tasks on your own. Social psychology (https://bit. ly/2xjQu5F) has identified several key requirements to intrinsic motivation in the workplace, including frequent and open communication between managers and their teams; high autonomy and trust in employees; and clear alignment between employee strengths and values and their job. Although we all generally subscribe to these same needs, it’s important to recognise that each of us is slightly unique in how we feel intrinsically motivated. Managers and mentors need to regularly check in with their teams so that they can personalise the employee experience appropriately and to take account of this human factor. Using these strategies organisations can build a stronger culture that inspires their people to work smarter and perform above and beyond the call of duty. A great place to start is to use employee engagement surveys to inform frequent conversations (https://bit.ly/3f6ivie) between managers and employees. These will help leaders know what their people need to thrive. Help employees take more ownership of their work. Encourage them to set goals, participate in decision making and give them freedom over how they do elements of their role, while letting them influence how they are rewarded. Coaching is an important part of this process. More than just offering feedback, ...intrinsic motivation is the excitement felt about the work itself...
it’s about taking an active part in helping team members navigate their own path to success. This is about enabling people to tap into their own desires, strengths and experience to reach the best solution, with guidance along the way. Tapping into your employees’ intrinsic motivators may also involve a change in organisational approach. For one firm in the transportation industry, for example, employee and customer safety was defined as the crux of their success. Through careful analysis of the feedback provided by the organisation’s nearly 100,000+ employees using modern employee engagement technology, its leaders identified high correlation between employee engagement levels and the risk of injury on the job. The firm also identified that it was not external factors, such as availability of injury-prevention resources, which caused the biggest disparity in injury rates across the various locations. Instead, the data showed that employees generally safer at work were those expressing a sense of belonging, trust, and empowerment — namely, those driven by intrinsic motivation. Armed with this information, the business leaders could address engagement issues and make resource adjustments accordingly. A sense of belonging and ownership are a big part of what motivates employees to show up and do their best work, rather than just watching the clock and taking home the pay packet. So, let’s extend to all our teams the respect they deserve by acknowledging this and aligning our HR and performance practice, as well as our organisation. If we do, the prize is significant – unlocking the vast potential of human intrinsic motivation, a self-sustaining source of fulfillment and performance that will revolutionise what you and your business can achieve. n
focus on performance bonuses, promotions, salary increases, or
sabbaticals to motivate their workforce. This thinking is reflected in use of tactics like ‘pay for performance’, the traditional performance appraisal, performance ratings, etc. The danger is in focusing exclusively on these external tactics at the expense of internal motivators, such as those the Edelman research spotlights. Clearly, these have a critical role to play, and if employers exclusively use external rewards to get people to achieve goals it can feel like they are trying to control their teams’ behaviour. We need to go beyond extrinsic, external drivers, to intrinsic motivation, which spurs employees to go above and beyond. Data analysis (https://bit. ly/2xjQkez) has found that when it came to motivating people to complete complex, quality-focused tasks that involve creativity, inner motivation was nearly six times more powerful than extrinsic motivation in predicting performance. We need to take note of this and start redesigning our HR and performance practices to realise the vast potential intrinsic motivation has in lifting performance. To be clear, intrinsic motivation is the excitement felt about the work
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | May 2020 | Issue 60 20
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker