Why you need to rethink your praise wall
Officevibe launched a new recognition feature, and youâve seen nothing like it before.âš Leaders worldwide have…
Employee motivation isnât very hard to get right, but, unfortunately, many companies are still stuck in the past.
Itâs not all about money. People have an innate desire to grow, learn, and make a real difference in the world. If companies were smart, theyâd work to create the type of environment that allows for that continuous development to occur.
Dan Pinkâs famous TED talk on motivation is one of the most powerful pieces of research on what really motivates employees.
Iâll explain the three secrets to team motivation based on Dan Pinkâs research, and give you tips on how you can implement them into your work culture.
Now letâs learn exactly how you can implement these into your workplace.
Based on Dan Pinkâs research, there are three things that you need to focus on to have sustainable employee motivation.
Things like perks, bonuses, and salary increases might get you an increase in employee motivation, but it will be short term. No one wakes up in the morning excited to come to work because thereâs a foosball table in the kitchen.
Itâs a nice to have, but if it was taken away tomorrow, your employees should still be motivated about what theyâre doing. They need to believe that theyâre valued and respected.
Showing that value and respect is easier said than done, but it is possible.
Fear, lack of trust, and lack of communication are the main reasons why so many companies still get this wrong.
Your employees are smart.
They have good ideas, they know what to do, and they genuinely have your companyâs best interests in mind.
Letâs go through each of them in more detail.
Employees need autonomy to do good work. They need to shown that respect of you getting out of their way and letting them work on a project from beginning to end. If an employee knows theyâre going to be critiqued or that youâll end up changing the work anyways, thereâs no way they can get as excited or motivated about it.
Many companies make the mistake of doing what I call âquasi-autonomyâ, where theyâll tell an employee they have autonomy, but then give âconstructive feedbackâ midway through the project. Ultimately, this is rooted in fear. Fear that the employee might not do exactly what you expect. But what if what youâre expecting isnât even the best way to do it?
Thereâs a lot of psychology behind being able to see a project from beginning to end yourself. When I studied a high-performing team, I believe the fact that the team had total ownership was a big reason for their success.
Dan Pink explains this perfectly. People have an intrinsic motivation to become better at whatever they do. If Iâm a writer, I want to become the best writer possible, whether my boss tells me to or not. This is important for you to understand, because you can help your employees master their skills without them fighting you on it.
When people plateau, they get bored. When they get bored, theyâll lose motivation and eventually start looking for work elsewhere. Everyone needs to be stimulated.
At Officevibe, we donât sell survey software – weâre changing the world of work. Employees need to feel like theyâre part of something bigger so that they can get excited about why theyâre coming into work every day.
If I believed that the reason I was getting up in the morning was to sell someone a tool to collect feedback, the excitement would fade pretty quickly. The fact that Iâm able to say that weâre making people happier at work by giving them a voice is what gets me out of bed every morning.
Arguably the most popular theory on motivation in general is Maslowâs Hierarchy of Needs.
The most fundamental need (at the bottom of the pyramid) are physiological things like food, water, housing, etc. While this is true, it has led managers to making one of the biggest mistakes about employee motivation. Since money is required for things like food, water, and housing, if we give employees more money, their needs will be even more satisfied.
But thatâs wrong.
Itâs true that everyone needs to earn a living. They have to pay the bills.
People also have to feel that they are fairly compensated for the amount of work that they do, this is whatâs known as equity theory. If itâs not an equal exchange, then the focus will be exclusively on that. But once the subject of compensation is taken off the table, what motivates employees long term are intrinsic motivators.
Itâs pretty well known that more money doesnât ever lead to anything effective. What usually ends up happening, is we adjust our lifestyles to account for the increase in money, so it makes no real difference. Weâre often still in the same position financially at the end of the day. What makes people happy is the feeling of pride from accomplishing something amazing.
In one study that Dan Pink talks about in his book Drive, he looks at what happens with rewards and kids drawing.
Researchers divided the children into three groups.
The first was the âexpected awardâ group. They showed each child a âGood Playerâ certificate and asked if the child wanted to draw in order to receive the award.
The second group was the âunexpected awardâ group. Researchers asked these children simply if they wanted to draw. If they decided to, when the session ended, the researchers handed each child one of the âGood Playerâ certificates.
The third group was the âno awardâ group. Researchers asked these children if they wanted to draw, but neither promised nor gave them a certificate at the end.
Children in the âunexpected awardâ and âno awardâ groups drew just as much, and with the same enthusiasm as they had before the experiment. But children in the first group showed much less interest and spent much less time drawing.
The prizes had turned play into work.
In another study, two Swedish economists found that offering a small payment in exchange for giving blood decreased the number of people willing to donate by half. The researchers suggest âthe payment tainted an altruistic act and âcrowded outâ the intrinsic desire to do something good.â
How do you help your employees grow?
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