“The Suprising Truth About What Motivates Us”
Autonomy, mastery and purpose drive knowledge workers’ performance. Once basic financial needs are met, the traditional carrot and stick are done. In “The Suprising Truth About What Motivates Us” research by the Federal Reserve, Harvard, MIT and more well-established institutions leads to this surprising insight.
Rewarding with a carrot and threatening with a stick works for mechanical tasks but once cognitive processing is involved and basic financial needs are met, knowledge workers are more motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose than by financial reward. More money may even have a detrimental effect on performance. As long as salary levels are such that basic needs are met, other higher-order needs take over as motivators.
Of course people want to be paid fairly. But this research suggest that money spent on expensive bonus schemes is much better spend by encouraging higher performance by:
Providing more autonomy: Empower employees to decide how to meet the objectives and goals of the organization; give them more autonomy to determine how to deliver results.
Encourage mastery of skills: skilled staff often show an inclination to learn beyond the requirements of their day job; structuring the role of staff to provide for continuous learning and elevation of skill levels acts as a motivator and has been shown to help retention.
Provide a sense of purpose: Ideally your organization/company has a clear sense of purpose that is communicated to all employees. Management can also enhance this by delivering a clear sense of purpose for specific jobs that supports the company's purpose.
Enjoy the videos !
animation video by RSA >> presentation on TED >>
Rewarding with a carrot and threatening with a stick works for mechanical tasks but once cognitive processing is involved and basic financial needs are met, knowledge workers are more motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose than by financial reward. More money may even have a detrimental effect on performance. As long as salary levels are such that basic needs are met, other higher-order needs take over as motivators.
Of course people want to be paid fairly. But this research suggest that money spent on expensive bonus schemes is much better spend by encouraging higher performance by:
Providing more autonomy: Empower employees to decide how to meet the objectives and goals of the organization; give them more autonomy to determine how to deliver results.
Encourage mastery of skills: skilled staff often show an inclination to learn beyond the requirements of their day job; structuring the role of staff to provide for continuous learning and elevation of skill levels acts as a motivator and has been shown to help retention.
Provide a sense of purpose: Ideally your organization/company has a clear sense of purpose that is communicated to all employees. Management can also enhance this by delivering a clear sense of purpose for specific jobs that supports the company's purpose.
Enjoy the videos !
animation video by RSA >> presentation on TED >>
Going the extra mile
Most organisational leaders agree that achieving success requires the active and willing participation of people throughout the organisation. However, the actions of their managers and culture of their organisations may be discouraging employees from doing so.
Finding and keeping the right people - with the right skills and in the right places around the world - presents unique challenges for organisations. Engaging those people to voluntarily deliver maximum effort in key strategic areas adds another dimension to the challenge. But you can’t just order people to come up with new ideas or to be more cost-conscious or more productive. They need to care about the organisation and be personally committed to its success. However, at a time when organisations are relying more than ever on their workforces, a new global survey by Towers Perrin finds that only one in seven employees worldwide are fully engaged with their work.
The Global Workforce Study, by consultants Towers Perrin, found that while many people are eager to contribute more at work, the actions of their managers and culture of their organisations may be discouraging them from doing so. It shows that there is a vast, and largely untapped, reserve of employee performance potential. The situation has organisations worldwide seeking to answer the question: How do we engage our workers and tap into this reserve?
read more >>
Finding and keeping the right people - with the right skills and in the right places around the world - presents unique challenges for organisations. Engaging those people to voluntarily deliver maximum effort in key strategic areas adds another dimension to the challenge. But you can’t just order people to come up with new ideas or to be more cost-conscious or more productive. They need to care about the organisation and be personally committed to its success. However, at a time when organisations are relying more than ever on their workforces, a new global survey by Towers Perrin finds that only one in seven employees worldwide are fully engaged with their work.
The Global Workforce Study, by consultants Towers Perrin, found that while many people are eager to contribute more at work, the actions of their managers and culture of their organisations may be discouraging them from doing so. It shows that there is a vast, and largely untapped, reserve of employee performance potential. The situation has organisations worldwide seeking to answer the question: How do we engage our workers and tap into this reserve?
read more >>
Staff development is the weapon of choice
Organisations are turning their attention to retention, rather than recruitment in the current economic climate. Yet many employers don’t have a formal resourcing strategy in place.
Employers are choosing to focus on retention rather than recruitment in response to current resourcing issues, finds the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey. This year's report revealed that 73% of organisations find a lack of necessary specialist skills remains the key resourcing challenge, whilst 56% of employers are tackling this by concentrating on retention strategies such as training and career development opportunities - with 75% of employers saying that 'additional training to allow internal staff to fill posts' was the most effective recruitment initiative.
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Employers are choosing to focus on retention rather than recruitment in response to current resourcing issues, finds the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey. This year's report revealed that 73% of organisations find a lack of necessary specialist skills remains the key resourcing challenge, whilst 56% of employers are tackling this by concentrating on retention strategies such as training and career development opportunities - with 75% of employers saying that 'additional training to allow internal staff to fill posts' was the most effective recruitment initiative.
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Reinventing HR
One would think the HR department would be a key player in most organizations: gathering and disseminating information about talent, helping to develop and implement strategy and developing practices and systems that motivate individual employees to ever-higher levels of performance. This is not the case.
Too often, the HR department essentially is an administrative function, handling payroll, benefits processing and formal training programs. Even HR departments that conduct regular employee attitude surveys and do talent assessments frequently have limited connections to the development and implementation of their organizations' business strategies.
As a result, an enormous opportunity exists for the leaders of HR functions to enhance their departments' roles. This is especially true in human capital (HC)-centric organizations whose strategies require that talent provides a competitive advantage. In these organizations, the need exists for a function that makes it a priority to develop and integrate all the elements of organizing and managing talent into a coordinated approach that fits the business strategy.
What is needed is an HR function that combines administration with expertise in human capital management and organizational effectiveness.
read more >>
Too often, the HR department essentially is an administrative function, handling payroll, benefits processing and formal training programs. Even HR departments that conduct regular employee attitude surveys and do talent assessments frequently have limited connections to the development and implementation of their organizations' business strategies.
As a result, an enormous opportunity exists for the leaders of HR functions to enhance their departments' roles. This is especially true in human capital (HC)-centric organizations whose strategies require that talent provides a competitive advantage. In these organizations, the need exists for a function that makes it a priority to develop and integrate all the elements of organizing and managing talent into a coordinated approach that fits the business strategy.
What is needed is an HR function that combines administration with expertise in human capital management and organizational effectiveness.
read more >>
You can't buy commitment
As far as many employers are concerned, one sure-fire way to boost the commitment and contentment of their staff is simply to pay them more money. But according to 2 new studies from the Journal of Psychology and the London school of Economics, this could actually have precisely the opposite effect.
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