Intrinsic Motivation

So how do we achieve this? In the workplace, people are thirsting to learn about how they’re doing but only if the information isn’t a tacit effort to manipulate their behaviour. People want meaningful information though, not just feedback such as,’The poster is perfect’

Our basic nature is to be curious and self-directed. Studies have shown that people need autonomy of their task, their time, their technique and their team. Perceived control is an important component in one’s happiness.

The best strategy for each employer is to figure out what is important to each employee.

If you are looking to retain and develop loyal staff members, a winning recipe we have found revolved around managers actually sitting down with their employees six times a year to discuss their level of engagement and path toward mastery.

Another option is to allow your staff what is known as 20% time where they are able to spend 20% of their working hours on a project that they particularly enjoy. It may not be related to their daily tasks but it should be related to the company in some way. This way they get to do what they really enjoy and come up with innovative ways of improving the company or product offering. When people are passionate about what they do, they are more likely to try and master it.

Here is a summary of how to get your staff more motivated:

• • Give positive and detailed feedback six times a year.
  • Allow your staff to feel as though they have autonomy over the following 4 things: task, time, team and technique (they should at least have autonomy over two of these)
  • 20% time- allow them to spend time during the week on something they find interesting. They should report back to manager with findings on the agreed date.

So contrary to the belief of the past century, promising a reward for good behaviour has the adverse effect on motivation and humans’ ability to perform. Learning how to motivate your staff is actually a far cheaper affair, it just requires a little more work from the managers in your company and a more efficient delegation of duties.

Ideally you should be finding out what motivates your staff, what part of their job do they enjoy doing the most and why do they work in this particular job. This will help you understand what information you will use to intrinsically motivate them to perform their best.