Employee Motivation Involves Assessing Ability, Devoting Resources, Then Reaching Job Goals

Today’s best managers know how employees tend to be motivated. First, employees assess their ability to perform tasks, then based on those assessments, they select performance goals that they believe they can achieve. Once goals are set, then employees devote energy and resources to achieving their goals. In this way, employees self-regulate their behavior and resources toward reaching desirable goals. Today’s best managers can help employees stay motivated by helping them set specific, difficult, yet reachable goals for their own individual knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Source: Vancouver, J. B., More, K . M., & Yoder, R. J. 2008. Self-efficacy and resource allocation: Support for a nonmonotonic discontinuous model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 35-47.

Motivate Employees By Helping Them Fulfill Four Drives

Today’s best managers know that employees have four main drives and employees rely on their managers to help them fulfill those drives. First, rewards should differentiate levels of employee performance from one another. Second, the culture should help create collaborative and sharing relationships and teamwork. Third, jobs should be meaningful and enable employees to contribute to the organization. Fourth, be fair in your processes and outcomes, and be transparent in your decisions. Employees will tend to rate a manager poorly if that manager does not help fulfill all four of the drives, even if three of the drives are fulfilled.

Source: Nohria, N., Groysberg, B., & Lee, L.-E. 2008. Employee motivation: A powerful new model. Harvard Business Review, 78-84.

Employees Who Help Others and Are Internally Motivated Tend To Have High Performance Levels

Managers want employees to be motivated to perform on the job. Today’s best managers know that some employees go above and beyond their typical job description and help others at work. Employees have higher levels of persistence, performance, and productivity when they desire to help others and when they have an internal drive to succeed. An internal desire to be successful can result in employees helping others more, and that enables higher performance in the organization. Today’s best managers can influence internal motivation levels by selecting applicants who have a passion for their line of work and a passion to work hard on the job.Grant,

Source: A. M. 2008. Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 48-58.

Help Employees Express Their Needs Then Help Them Fill Those Needs

Today’s best managers know that successful organizations meet the psychological needs of their employees. Companies that encourage their employees to express their needs and help them find ways to meet those needs will be more successful than companies that don’t. Examples of employee psychological needs include: feeling included, being appreciated and recognized, being challenged to achieve, feeling trusted, being able to grow, and having meaning and purpose. Help employees to express their needs and take responsibility for meeting their own needs. Specifically hire employees who are needs-intelligent, and celebrate when employees meet their psychological needs.

Source: Glaser, J. E., & Jones, C. 2008. Meeting people’s needs: You can create a needs-intelligent workplace. Leadership Excellence, 25/3, pp. 13-14.

Compensation Is Still Important For Motivating and Satisfying Employees

Today’s best managers know that compensation is important, but that money is not the most important motivator for employees. Financial security is also important to employees. Employees tend to care about: their base rate of pay, getting pay that is competitive in their local marketplace, having opportunities for variable pay based on performance and merit, and getting stock options to supplement their income. Interesting, variable pay is often seen as more enticing and motivating to younger employees with less seniority in their companies compared to older employees.

Source: HRfocus. 2008, August. What do employees value in compensation? Page 4.

Employees Who Are Passionate About Their Job Would Take A Pay Cut

Today’s best managers know that the best job performance comes from employees who are passionate about the work that they do. Most employees in the United States and around the world, about 80%, say that they would take a pay cut if they could pursue their dream job. More and more employees are willing to forego pay in order to have more fulfilling and meaningful careers, instead of getting higher pay. This is especially interesting in that even with a struggling economy, employees are willing to get paid less in order to have a job that they are really passionate about.

Source: Many workers would take pay cut for the ‘dream job’. HRfocus. 2008, July. Page 9.

Not Meeting Employee Expectations May Not Be As Bad For Organizations As Was Thought

Managers know that unmet employee expectations on the job can negatively affect: organizational commitment, job performance, absenteeism, motivation, job satisfaction, and turnover. However, today’s best managers know that the influence of unmet employee expectations on job attitudes and behaviors may be less powerful than was once thought. Instead, actual experiences may play a more important role than meeting or not meeting employees’ expectations. Although meeting employee expectations is still important, today’s best managers can worry less about the negative results that doing so might have on employees’ behaviors and attitudes on the job.

Source: Brown, S. A., Venkatesh, V., Kuruzovich, J., Massey, A. P. 2008. Expectation confirmation: An examination of three competing models. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 105, 52-66.

High Employee Job Performance Over Time Can Be Motivated By Internal and External Sources

Managers want employee job performance to be high and to stay high over time. Today’s best managers know that the motivation to perform a job well can come from both inside and outside of an employee. Internal motivation for employees comes from setting goals and seeing that they have the ability to reach those goals. When employees get feedback that they are reaching their goals, then their internal motivation to perform may continue. External motivation for employees can come in the form of other employees wanting to help them, and in receiving money and benefits from the organization.

Source: Zyphur, M. J., Chaturvedi, S., & Arvey, R. D. 2008. Job performance over time is a function of latent trajectories and previous performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 217-224.

Find Out How Your Employees View Work And Help Them Stay Motivated

Today’s best managers know that employees can think about work in three different ways. Some employees see work as just a job. These employees are motivated by what they get out of a job, such as pay and benefits. Some employees see work as a career. These employees are motivated by rewards that come from professional advancements. Some employees see work as a calling. These employees are motivated by the personal fulfillment that doing their job gives them. Today’s best managers find out how their employees view their jobs and help provide them with what motivates their view of work.


Source: Wright, T. A., & Goodstein, J. 2008, December. Character is not “dead” in management research: A review of individual character and organization-level virtue. Journal of Management, 33, 928-958.