Make it attractive

Finding out what truly motivates employees.

An experiment was conducted by a psychologist called Chip Heath in 1999, when he asked a large group of bank employees what motivated them at work. Then he asked them what he thought others would say to the same questions.

He gave everyone a list of eight key factors that influence job satisfaction. The first half of the list was made up of extrinsic motivations (e.g. pay, benefits etc) and the second half of intrinsic ones (e.g. developing skills, learning new things).

· Quality of benefits

· Amount of pay

Job security

· A good schedule

Make it attractive is a principle based on an idea that employees are motivated to perform better by how they react emotionally to a situation than how they evaluate it rationally. Lots of experiments have been done to illustrate how this idea can be used in business.

· Praise from manager

· Helping customers

Learning new things

· Developing skills

As you can see, there’s a clear pattern: people think others are much more motivated by pay and schedules and much less motivated by things like learning new skills etc. Employees’ predictions and reality were completely out of kilter in Heath’s experiment.

He argued that this is a repeated, regular and problematic mistake: that we underestimate how much others are motivated by the same things we are.

Companies will put too much emphasis on pay and benefits and too little on making jobs challenging, allowing people to learn new things, helping people see the benefit and purpose of their role.

There’s an opportunity at most companies to rectify this imbalance.

Show employees their worth

Heath shows lots of ways to boost employees’ sense of worthwhile: one of his studies amongst call centre workers to was show them the value of their job. He talked to employees of a university call centre whose task was to ring up alumni to ask for donations. He introduced them to people who had benefitted from these donations: students from poor backgrounds who had been able to go to the university as a result of previous graduates’ generosity.

Heath showed that by meeting these beneficiaries, the call centre staff’s motivation was boosted. It led to a long term increase in donations.

How do you apply this idea?

Think about the imbalance between perception and reality: about spending more time explaining intrinsic benefits of the job to employees – how they can learn new skills and accomplish something worthwhile. You’ll be tapping into genuine motivations –not what we think motivates them.