{"id":93346,"date":"2023-02-27T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=93346"},"modified":"2023-02-28T12:18:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T16:18:46","slug":"employee-motivation-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/employee-motivation-strategies\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee Motivation Strategies: Beyond Financial Incentives "},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Do you feel like your employees are lacking motivation? What can you do to improve motivation in your organization?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies are only as good as their employees. Your company can\u2019t grow and improve unless your employees are motivated to go above and beyond. Thus, to keep growing and maintain your company\u2019s success, leaders must keep their employees’ motivation juices flowing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to learn about the psychology of motivation, why financial incentives only go so far in motivating employees<\/a>, and a few employee motivation strategies to consider. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Why Financial Incentives Only Go So Far in Motivating Employees<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to Daniel Pink, the author of Drive<\/em><\/a>, financial incentives only go so far in motivating employees. <\/strong>Sufficient compensation serves as a \u201cbaseline reward\u201d or a \u201chygiene factor\u201d\u2014if it\u2019s not there, employees cannot focus. They\u2019ll obsess over how unfair their situation is and be anxious about their financial problems. So, high enough financial rewards are necessary for a baseline <\/em>of motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in the long term, financial incentives actually decrease motivation. This idea may sound counterintuitive\u2014if you enjoy something when you do it for free, then wouldn\u2019t adding money only make it better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Pink, extrinsic rewards require people to forfeit some autonomy<\/strong>\u2014if a person is doing something by herself, she\u2019s fully in control of her behavior. But once she starts doing it for money, someone else is pulling her lever, and she no longer feels fully in control of their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extrinsic rewards also quash the cognitive dissonance that comes with unrewarded work. Cognitive dissonance works like this\u2014when volunteering, a person subconsciously reasons, \u201cwell I\u2019m not getting paid for this work, so if I\u2019m working hard, I must enjoy it.\u201d Once a person starts getting paid, she instead reasons, \u201cwell, I don\u2019t really enjoy the work, but it\u2019s fine since I\u2019m getting paid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to impinging on autonomy, extrinsic rewards can narrow people\u2019s focus to short-term effects, ignoring long-term benefits.<\/strong> If employees get rewards for achieving short-term targets, they may focus more on the short-term reward and less on how to improve the company\u2019s long-term performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\r\nTITLE: Drive
\r\nAUTHOR: Daniel H. Pink
\r\nTIME: 17
\r\nREADS: 37.4
\r\nIMG_URL: https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/drive-cover.jpg
\r\nBOOK_SUMMARYURL: drive-summary-daniel-pink
\r\nAMZN_ID: B004P1JDJO
\r\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Improving Employee Motivation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to Abraham Maslow, people are motivated by the desire to satisfy their needs. Once a need is met, motivation ceases. Therefore, to create motivation, you need to create a climate in which some of your employees\u2019 needs are constantly unsatisfied.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the needs, in order of lowest to highest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Survival,<\/strong> which is the need for basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. <\/li>
  2. Safety, <\/strong>which is the need for things that allow access to basic necessities.<\/li>
  3. Belonging,<\/strong> which is the need to be part of a group of like-minded members and the need for love and relationships<\/a>.<\/li>
  4. Status,<\/strong> which is the need for recognition<\/a> or esteem, or to keep up with others. Often, this recognition is only valuable to the person seeking it. <\/li>
  5. \u201cSelf-actualization,\u201d <\/strong>which is the need to achieve your personal best or a higher purpose. There are two drivers of this need:
    1. Competence.<\/strong> This is the drive to become a master<\/a> of a particular skill. The majority of people are competence-driven. <\/li>
    2. Achievement. <\/strong>This is the need to be good at everything you do. <\/li><\/ol><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      The first three needs inspire employees to get a job and report for work. All three of them are possible to satisfy, so when they\u2019re met, motivation declines. For example, at an Intel plant in the Caribbean, many people only worked until they had made a certain amount of money. Once they had as much as they thought they needed to satisfy their needs, they quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The last two needs encourage high performance. Status is satisfiable, so motivation will eventually cease once an employee reaches a certain level of success<\/a>, but self-actualization is limitless because there\u2019s no concrete goal attached to it. Therefore, as a leader, you need to provide your employees with opportunities for self-actualization to keep them motivated. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      In his book High Output Management<\/em><\/a>, former CEO of Intel Andrew Grove outlines several employee motivation strategies centered around self-actualization: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      1. Assess where people fall in Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of needs. <\/strong>One way to do this is to look at how they view money and raises. If a subordinate gets a raise and she\u2019s concerned with the absolute value, then she\u2019s working at the survival or security level. If she\u2019s concerned with the relative value (how her raise compares to her coworkers\u2019), then she\u2019s likely after status or self-actualization and is using money as a measure of achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For example, a venture capitalist motivated to make $10 million who already has <\/em>$10 million doesn\u2019t need money to meet survival, security, or social needs. Additionally, more money probably won\u2019t give her more status because venture capitalists don\u2019t usually announce their success. Therefore, for her, money is a record of how much she\u2019s achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      2. Reassess hierarchy position from time to time<\/strong>. People can move both up and down Maslow\u2019s hierarchy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For example, when manufacturing employees at an Intel plant in California were working on their higher needs and there was an earthquake, they all regressed to meeting survival needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      3. Base achievement recognition on output.<\/strong> Only attach status and self-actualization to achievements that are output-relevant. Otherwise, people will be motivated to work towards things that don\u2019t benefit the company, such as competing for the nicest office chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For example, at Intel, knowledge for the sake of knowledge isn\u2019t particularly recognized, but applying that knowledge to produce results is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      4. Consider the effects of fear.<\/strong> In the past, fear of punishment was the main employee motivation strategy. (If people didn\u2019t work, they didn\u2019t have the money to eat. Their only option would be to steal food, the punishment for which was hanging. Therefore, people were motivated to work to avoid the punishment of death.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      These days, the fear approach is being replaced by more humane employee motivation strategies. However, fear is still present in status and self-actualization, though it\u2019s usually internally-generated fear of failure<\/a>. Fear can <\/em>be motivating\u2014it encourages people to perform\u2014but it can also become an obsession, which results in a reluctance to take risks because they come with the danger of failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      5. Create opportunities for people to test themselves.<\/strong> People will produce greater output trying to achieve things that are just beyond their reach (self-actualization is always a little out of reach).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      6. Make work mimic competitive sports.<\/strong> Competition is highly motivating, so if you can tap into this, you can increase performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      7. Provide feedback.<\/strong> When striving to meet the need for self-actualization, motivation is generated by the drive to improve, and it\u2019s impossible to improve without feedback. People provide their own internal feedback\u2014for example, when a professional violinist is practicing and hears herself play a wrong note, she can go over the section again until she gets it right\u2014but also require external feedback. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \nTITLE: High Output Management
      \nAUTHOR: Andrew S. Grove
      \nTIME: 46
      \nREADS: 119
      \nIMG_URL: https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/high-output-management-cover.png
      \nBOOK_SUMMARYURL: high-output-management-summary-andrew-s-grove
      \nAMZN_ID: XYZ
      \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Motivation vs. Engagement<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      While helpful, employee motivation strategies can only go so far: Short-term changes in motivation are bound to happen in any organization. According to Paul Marciano, the author of Carrots and Sticks Don\u2019t Work<\/em><\/a>, engagement can help buffer against motivational slumps, like time pressure and equipment failures. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Engagement is an intrinsic, deep-rooted commitment to the job, organization, team, manager, and customer. Engaged employees<\/a> work hard for the sake of the organization and because they feel fulfilled.To picture the difference between engagement and motivation, imagine that a team is working to meet a deadline. An equipment failure makes it impossible to meet the goal. Do they keep soldiering on trying to achieve the most, or do they give up? Engaged people do the first, motivated the second. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Surveys of engaged employees show these factors improve engagement in the workplace<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n