Motivation

Employee Experience

Employee Engagement

CEO & Founder

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We hear a lot about engaged employees being more productive employees, and that employees who are motivated going over and above the basics that their role requires of them. There appears to be a strong link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction that shows that there is a compelling business reason to invest in the people experience at work. But if we want satisfied and motivated employees, you will need to design work with this in mind.
Employee satisfaction and results: The service profit chain has been around for a long time now and the principle is a simple one that when explained to most people they nod and say, &ldquo;makes sense!&rdquo; It is a model based on getting the People Experience right, by design and driving employee motivation and satisfaction, which in turn drives business success. In the service profit chain model, employee satisfaction leads to better outcomes for your people, which puts them in a better place to deliver the Customer Experience, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately revenue growth and profit (which can be invested back into the people experience). The People Experience Hub take on this model is shown below: Employee Motivation and Satisfaction in The Service Value Chain&nbsp;
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What does the research tell us about the importance of employee satisfaction? The importance of employee satisfaction has been researched many times, recently <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aedmans/">Professor Alex Edmans</a>&nbsp;from the London Business school looked at the Fortune 100 best companies to work for and found that firms with the best levels of employee satisfaction outperformed their peers by 2.3% to 3.8% at the stock market. Alex says: &gt; It&rsquo;s employee satisfaction that causes good performance, rather than good performance allowing a firm to invest in employee satisfaction. Research from Hoseong Jeon &amp; Beomjoon Choi published in the Journal of Services Marketing in 2012 called &ldquo;The relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction&rdquo; shows that employee satisfaction does have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. But interestingly customer satisfaction has limited or no impact on employee satisfaction. This is especially meaningful for service industries like hospitality and retail where they invest a lot of time and money in designing the best customer experience possible. &gt; The results suggest that the ES-CS relationship is unilateral rather than mutual. In particular, using dyadic data, this study found out employees&rsquo; job satisfaction leads to customer satisfaction but not vice versa.
People Experience by Design One of our mantras here at The <a href="https://pxhub.io">People Experience </a>Hub is &ldquo;People experience, by design&rdquo; and we help great companies do just this by understanding how people who work there think about their work design. And this design covers the full spectrum of work including, job design, the tools they have to do their job well, their pay and benefits, how they interact with their peers, the workplace and more. Frederick Herzberg, an American psychologist, developed a well documented two-pronged approach to thinking about satisfaction and motivation. He realised that things that may help with employee satisfaction do not necessarily drive motivation as well and vice-versa. The chart below shows in blue the elements that can cause dissatisfaction if poorly designed or implemented and in orange the elements that, if implemented well, can drive motivation. (The chart is ordered with Employee Satisfaction in mind) Sources of employee dissatisfaction and motivation. We can see here that while having great company policies and administration is unlikely to motivate your people, the absence of them will certainly drive dissatisfaction. The workplace is not a major motivator, but bad workplace design will always reduce levels of Employee Satisfaction. The presence of great recognition will motivate staff, the absence will see employee satisfaction reduce.
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Who are we designing work for? We think that you should design work to work for most of your people, but we find more and more that companies have designed work not to be &lsquo;people-centric&rsquo; but rather:
Task owner-centric design You can see this if the phrase &ldquo;It is easier for me if&hellip;&rdquo; is used &ndash; we see this with expenses policies a lot! Rather than design it with the core users in mind it is designed with the finance process in mind.
Technology centric design You can see this if the phrase &ldquo;It is easier for the system if&hellip;&rdquo; is used.
Customer-centric Designed simply with just the customer in mind and ignoring the employee
Moving to People-centric design, there are several models that show that looking at design from the human user makes absolute sense, whether it is from process design, user design or ergonomic design the biggest driver has to be the human who will ultimately be performing the task, using the system or sitting in the chair. This approach lets you design the experience with ALL people considered from the employee to the processor, the customer and the consumer. Human-Centred Design (HCD) takes into account all people aspects when looking at solving a problem or designing an experience. Poor work design will lead to **dissatisfaction** and **demotivated** people. Another issue we are seeing is that the design happened a long time ago when the world was a different place. The failure for work to move design with new technology or different customer design will often mean that while you may have started with your people in mind this has now drifted and will translate into a poor people experience. One of our clients reviews their processes every 6 months to ensure that they are still relevant to the continually moving world in which they operate.
Measuring the experience Capturing feedback from your people at all stages of the employee journey allows you to understand what works and what needs work to make it better for your people (by design) Employee feedback - culture, wellbeing, opinion, brand, evp
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Our <a href="https://pxhub.io/employee-feedback/pulse-surveys">Pulse Surveys</a> allow you to ask targeted questions or seek feedback from a segment of your workforce at any given time. Survey all employees using <a href="https://pxhub.io/employee-feedback/employee-engagement-surveys">employee engagement surveys</a>&nbsp;to get under the skin and to give you a baseline of your people experience. Our Culture/EVP and Brand surveys looks at how your internal brand and employee offering is perceived. And <a href="https://pxhub.io/employee-feedback/wellbeing-surveys">wellbeing surveys</a> to check in on your peoples physical, psychological and financial health. Using our analytics engine to show you by any demographic how satisfied your people are and how motivated they are allowing you to make changes that drive visible results. By seeing that a department or a role in your business has dissatisfaction levels enable you to go where the problem is armed with real data that you can use to help people have a better People Experience every day.
--- <a href="https://pxhub.io/blog/guide-to-employee-surveys-1-design">Check out our guide to running employee surveys</a>
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How Employee Satisfaction Drives Better Business Results

There's often much debate about employee satisfaction, but research clearly shows that it can drive better business results, through what is known as the service value chain.

How Employee Satisfaction is Better Business

Autonomy

...or &ldquo;But they&rsquo;ll never take away our autonomy!&rdquo; &gt;The secret to happiness is freedom&hellip; And the secret to freedom is courage &gt;Thucydides You will no doubt have heard a lot about the importance of autonomy in the workplace when it comes to **Employee Satisfaction** and **Employee Motivation** - in fact it's one of three accepted drivers of <a href="https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/theory/">intrinsic motivation </a>(motivation in the absence of external rewards). But what about the importance of freedom?
So, is it Freedom or Autonomy? Same thing, right? Well, it gets a little complex depending on who you are speaking to and in what context. Autonomy at its basest means the ability to self-rule and freedom is a little different. When we think about freedom, we need to make a distinction between two things: - Freedom from&hellip;(negative freedom) or &lsquo;The absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints&rsquo; - Freedom to&hellip;(positive freedom) or &lsquo;The freedom to act&rsquo; So, can you have autonomy and the presence of obstacles, barriers and constraints? Well, yes. Maybe not absolute autonomy. Is autonomy freedom within a framework? And for this blog shall we call that framework &lsquo;Work&rsquo;? In an agile organisation, people are free to do what they need to do. In short, there are fewer rules about how to do things, and only rules that make it easier to work... ...'freedom from' unncecessary or unhelpful constraints. Often when we say &lsquo;Autonomy&rsquo;, we are referring to &lsquo;Freedom to act&rsquo; and not so much are we referring to &lsquo;Freedom from&hellip;&rsquo; I personally think that autonomy is probably not just about removing rules about what your people can and can't do - what they wear, when and how they work. These examples are simply reducing the employee&rsquo;s negative freedoms, removing constraints or the extent to which their day to day life is controlled If you are thinking about how to give autonomy to your people, then you also need to think about how you give them the freedom be the best them they can be too! Fundamentally, what we are talking about here is power and control **over** their own work. But what is it and how does this translate into the People Experience in your world of work?
Autonomy and Employee Motivation We know that freedom and autonomy in the workplace has a direct impact on both the satisfaction and the motivation of your people. Let&rsquo;s look at a few areas for example:
Company Policies: Do your policies **enable ** people to do great work, are they light touch and in place to support your people, reviewed regularly with the policy owner and the people the policy impacts? Or, do they put up a barrier to great work, are they heavy going or ambiguous, do they suck the time out of an individual&rsquo;s day to adhere to a policy? If the former, Whoop! Sounds great but if the latter&hellip;oh no! your barrier to great work is reducing freedom, autonomy and possibly driving dissatisfaction
Responsibility: Do you **encourage ** people to take responsibility for delivering their work, to influence how this might be done and enable them to manage the outcomes, both good and bad? Or do you prescribe what, when and how they must carry out their work, maybe they need to report in to let you know they have done the work or even send the outputs to you, so you can forward them on? Does the first example sound like something you would do? Yay! Sounds like you get it and your people will feel more motivated by this! Does the second example ring a bell? The 'freedom to' take responsibility is a real driver of motivation for your people, so putting in rules that restrict peoples ability to act with responsibility or if you act in a way that reduces your peoples level of responsibility then you could be driving down motivation and satisfaction levels. But why is this important?
Freedom, Autonomy and Psychological wellbeing In a recent industry survey of HR professionals carried out by The People Experience Hub and Phil Wilcox from <a href="https://www.emotionatwork.co.uk/">Emotion@Work </a>, we saw in the results what appears to be a link between people&rsquo;s freedom and their levels of stress. **90% **of those people who said that they did not have the freedom to do their best work said that they had felt stressed about work in the last 4 weeks. (compared to **63%** of those who said they did have the freedom to do their best work) Over **50%** of these also said that work regularly kept them awake at night. (compared to **29%** of people who said they did have the freedom to do their best work) &gt;You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free &gt;thich nhat hanh
Measuring the experience Designing a workplace where the culture supports autonomy and freedom for your people to do their best work impacts positively on satisfaction and motivation and could also improve employee wellbeing, so it makes real sense to strive towards this where you work. Understanding what gets in the way of trusting people to do their roles and what stops us removing barriers or obstacles in their way will allow you to develop a climate in your organisation where autonomy, or freedom, is the default position. Our <a href="https://pxhub.io/employee-feedback">employee feedback solution </a>allow you to understand how your people think about the world of work you have designed for them including satisfaction, motivation, <a href="https://pxhub.io/blog/strategies-for-building-autonomy-at-work">autonomy</a> and freedom.

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Freedom and Autonomy are both considered important to employee motivation, but are they fundamentally the same thing? In this blog we explore this question and why it matters.

Freedom! (or Autonomy) and Employee Motivation

Freedom and Autonomy are both considered important to employee motivation, but are they fundamentally the same thing? In this blog Nick explores this question and why it matters.

Freedom!

Wellbeing

We know that the overall wellbeing of employees has a major impact on so many areas of the People Experience at work and this may also impact productivity, motivation, satisfaction and of course profitability, so should employers get involved? And more&hellip;should they reward healthy behaviour?
Actually, we have a wellbeing scheme! Employers have implemented all sorts of fab benefits schemes to support their employees in having good health, from Gym Discounts, Dental, Healthcare Trusts, Financial Education and free fruit in the office but does this simply provide a benefit for employees that for example are voracious fruit eaters who now get to eat for free or does it change behaviours so that employees can be healthier?
Why might an employer want to reward healthy behaviour? A recent study by the University of California found that organisations that had a wellness program saw an increase in productivity of **5%** &ndash; roughly equivalent to **1 additional productive day per employee per month!** Companies will invest in employee engagement but research by Fairhurst and Connor in 2010 showed that whilst highly engaged employees are generally productive when that productivity is not coupled with wellbeing, there is a real risk of burnout, check out the 4 box grid below to see what this looks like: Fairhurst and Connor Wellbeing and Productivity - Is Engagement Always Healthy?
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So, it would certainly appear that there are some real business reasons for an organisation to want their staff to be healthy.
A more human reason? But is there a more human driver for a company supporting employee wellbeing? If we only ever focus on the outputs for the Company then our driver is not a human one. We cannot claim that we care about people if it's only if when there is a measurable benefit for the business. Would we ask "what's in it for me?" for every people decision we make at work?
Best of both worlds? <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/robrobson">Rob, our Director of People Science </a>points out that if you are building a business case for senior managers in today&rsquo;s world you may want to think about this from both angles: &gt;'Humans deserve better' and productivity are two very different motivations. When it comes to motivations, two is better than one
So, should we reward healthy habits? Providing wellbeing solutions as part of your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is great but incentivising behaviours need to be carefully thought out as you might, in fact, be undermining people's motivation to adopt healthy behaviours if you do.

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We know that the overall wellbeing of employees has a major impact on so many areas of the People Experience at work and this may also impact Productivity, Motivation, Satisfaction and much more so should employers get involved? And more…should they reward healthy habits?


Should employers reward employees for healthy behaviour?

Director of People Science

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**So here we are. January 2021. Lockdown 3…**

Let's face it, we're all pretty fed up now. To state what should be blindingly obvious, the challenge of engaging and motivating your remote team right now isn't just about the remote part. It's lockdown, it's 10 months of misery. Kids at home, trying to work in sub-optimal conditions, having barely left the house in weeks. In winter. 

Whatever your industry or business context, even if your team is used to working remotely, there is nothing normal about the current situation.


## Now is a good time to re-evaluate your team's working practices

We won't be in lockdown forever, but it's important to recognise that it is genuinely tough for people right now. It is, therefore, a good time to take some time out to check in and evaluate how your team is working. By doing so you can ensure that they remain happy, engaged and, perhaps most importantly, healthy.


## So, how do I keep my remote team engaged during lockdown?

Keeping your team healthy and engaged means accepting that results will be affected and that the challenges are different for everyone.

There's no silver bullet, but the most important thing you can do right now is listen and adapt your working practices to the needs of your team, both collectively and as individuals. 

There are four themes that we recommend having a conversation with your team about (for which we've created a guide with some structured questions). These are goals, norms and routines, interactions and support.

As a general rule, your role in this conversation is to ask questions and allow the team members to articulate their needs and wants for effective remote working and for maintaining the social connection that's so critical to wellbeing and engagement. As lockdown is eventually loosened and people start to think about coming back to the office, then it will be time to revisit the conversation.


## Four areas to cover in your team conversation

### 1. Goals

This is about re-assessing goals to ensure that your people maintain a sense of purpose and motivation without feeling overwhelmed or fearful of factors they can’t control.

If you've not acknowledged the likelihood that your people will lose some productivity, whether that’s from working remotely or the stresses of lockdown, you probably should. Are your team still working towards targets that they're not able to hit? Do they have too many things to focus on? Conversely, are they able to enjoy their work and have a bit of fun?

### 2. Norms and Routine

It is important to help people find the clarity and structure to be effective while making sure that they have the freedom to flex and make their own choices about how they work.

On one hand, people's routines have been disrupted by the lockdown. On the other, they may have new constraints forced upon them by, for example, having kids home schooling. By revisiting norms and routines you can make sure everyone has the structure that they need to continue working well together.

### 3. Interactions

This is about recognising that people need both time for themselves and time with others, to varying degrees, and that isolation and overload can both be problematic.

Everyone has different needs, both for volume of interaction and the means by which you communicate. It's important to get the balance right between the needs of individuals and the collective, and to make sure that everyone can contribute and stay engaged.

### 4. Support

Consider how to create opportunities to for team members give and receive both social support and more practical, performance focused support, individually and collectively.

Again, everyone has different support needs. For some, it will be emotional while others might struggle without the informal on-the-job coaching that they get from team-mates, and of course there's satisfaction to be gained for the 'givers' too.


## How to approach the conversation with your team

Don't sweat this too much, but remember that open questions (i.e. who, what, where, when, how) will open up the conversation and closed questions (i.e. yes / no) will close it down!

Again, this isn't about your ideas - unless your team asks or really doesn't engage in the conversation. But then, that could be a sign of a wider issue.

If you would like some structured questions to drive a team conversation, [download our guide to keeping your team happy, healthy and engaged during lockdown](https://pxhub.io/library/happy-healthy-and-engaged-during-lockdown).
![Guide to keeping remote teams engaged](/uploads/80f21a60d4c145f9a68326dbe526f575.png)

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Lockdown. Again. Whatever your business, even if your team is used to working remotely, the current situation is sub-optimal. So how do you keep them engaged?

How to Keep Your Remote Team Engaged During Lockdown

Connection

Client Success Manager

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Although remote work has been steadily increasing over the last few years, COVID-19 has drastically increased the percentage of employees who are now working from their homes. With COVID-19 disrupting daily life and what was once a normal work routine, office workers across the country are having to find new ways to stay connected with colleagues they no longer see in-person every day. There is a dark side to working remotely and that is the loneliness that stems from the lack of interaction. Remote workers are more likely to quit because of loneliness and low engagement.
Remote working takes some getting used to Just like you have regular daily habits with your team in the office, you will now have to create new routines and rituals that work virtually.
Here&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re doing to stay connected, remotely Here are some of my suggestions to preserve team connectivity and to fulfil the social needs of your teams while adopting the work-from-home lifestyle.
Weekly virtual coffee We usually have a mess about with the different backgrounds and filters too, Nick our CEO loves a studio apartment as his, whereas I am partial to living underwater. This really breaks up the day and can take your mind off a stressful day with lots of meetings. Weekly virtual coffee sessions can replace the regular break room chat. Try to set a regular rhythm in these meetings and try your best not to cancel or reschedule it.
Here's one of our most recent coffee chats!
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Encourage group chats your colleagues don&rsquo;t think about work all day every day. Many of them have outside interests and hobbies they like to participate in. In fact, some of them may get together and engage in these outside interests together! Even though everyone is working at home, that doesn&rsquo;t mean your colleagues wouldn&rsquo;t appreciate the chance to connect with others with similar interests. So, set up some virtual groups to facilitate conversation. These social groups let your remote staff bond and connect with people who have similar interests, but maybe don&rsquo;t work in the same department as they do, allowing them to learn more about each other and the company. *"In teamwork, silence isn't golden, it's deadly."* &mdash; **Mark Sanborn, Author**
Frequent check-ins Occasionally I miss swivelling in my chair and asking the salesperson or data analyst beside me a quick question. While this kind of spur of the moment interaction may be difficult, it&rsquo;s not impossible. Check-in with your employees as often as possible and share any updates and changes in the business. Also, make sure to follow up on any announcements. *"You can never over-communicate enough as a leader at a company, but at a remote company, nothing could be truer. Because you don't physically see people in-person, information doesn't spread in the same way, so leaders need to do the heavy lifting for evangelizing the message."* &mdash; **Claire Lew, Know Your Team**
Question of the Week Since there&rsquo;s a good chance working from home will last for a while, post a random question in whatever chat application you use once a week. The questions can be short and sweet (What&rsquo;s your favourite season?), encourage longer answers (What&rsquo;s your favourite season and why?), be silly (Would you rather have a unicorn or a dinosaur as a pet?), or be somewhat serious (Which officemate would you prefer: dog or cat?). You will probably get some interesting answers and learn a lot about your team in the process. The benefit here is that everybody doesn&rsquo;t have to be online at the same time for this to work. People can pop in and answer whenever it&rsquo;s convenient and read through the responses when they need a quick and uplifting break. If you&rsquo;re a manager, check-in on employees at the start of each day. Something as simple as &ldquo;Good morning! How are things going today? What can I help you with?&rdquo; is a great place to start. Personal contact is important at this time and should be explicitly practised, keeping people feeling in the loop.
Set weekly challenges with different colleagues. Nick and I love art, it is a regular conversation with us, so this is a great idea. You can still have fun remotely and laugh with your colleagues, by taking it in turns to set weekly challenges for the group. Some ideas you can try out are baking cakes, drawing pictures, or sharing a joke/ story. It is entertaining and could give you all something to look forward to each week.
Working Remotely from Home Doesn&rsquo;t Mean Being Alone It&rsquo;s important that companies create an environment where leadership and employees can stay connected while working remotely. While team building is only one part of building a strong company culture, a few planned and thoughtful gestures always go a long way toward making everyone feel like they are part of the team&mdash;no matter where they are.
How are you and your colleagues maintaining your work relationships? What has worked for your teams? Let us know!
The People Experience Hub work with clients to transform their people experience, combining our flexible <a href="https://pxhub.io/employee-feedback">employee feedback</a> tools, partnership-driven approach, and expertise in organisational psychology and people management.

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Keeping our team connected whilst working remotely

Learn how our team have been staying connected whilst remote working and dealing with lockdown. 

5 Things We Do To Stay Connected Whilst Working Remotely

Recently I was asked by Naomi, our Head of Sales and Marketing, what I thought about Intrinsic Motivation. And while the short answer is that it&rsquo;s pretty influential in my work, I thought I&rsquo;d take the time to outline my thoughts on how it relates to the People Experience and, more specifically, Employee Engagement.
What is Employee Engagement? That might seem like a daft question, but there are many different models and measures of employee engagement, and few have been scrutinised through peer-reviewed research. One definition that has, however, is Shuck and colleagues&rsquo;: &gt; "a positive, active, work-related psychological state operationalized by the maintenance, intensity, and direction of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral energy.&rdquo; In everyday language, it&rsquo;s saying that engaged employees are focused, emotionally committed to the organisation, and work hard (to exceed expectation). Or, you might say, motivated.
What do we mean by the People Experience? We differentiate the People Experience from Employee Engagement because it&rsquo;s a broader and more holistic concept that helps us to provide flexibility and better understand what&rsquo;s going on for their people.
The People Experience Hub framework:
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In our three level framework, we&rsquo;d put Employee Engagement as described above into our pot of Observable Outcomes. But another way of describing Employee Engagement is as a process, and in some respects our model represents that process. Into the first level of our model, Perceived Environment, goes the organisational practices, processes and structures that influence the People Experience. Even if that environment is more or less the same for everybody, we can all experience it differently. You might love it and I might hate it. Which is where our personalities, values and beliefs come into the picture. So this second level, the Felt Experience, is much more individual. Into that pot we&rsquo;ve put feelings of Belonging, Purpose, (Emotional) Connection, Enjoyment, Autonomy and Growth. And in turn, those feelings influence our attitudes, behaviours and energy levels - our third level.
What is Intrinsic Motivation? Intrinsic Motivation is when we are motivated do something not because of what it will lead to (e.g. reward or punishment), but because it&rsquo;s satisfying in itself, enjoyable or interesting. Self-Determination Theory (Deci &amp; Ryan, 1985) suggests that intrinsically motivated behaviour is facilitated by conditions that satisfy <a href="https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/theory/">three&nbsp;basic psychological needs</a>
that are essential to healthy human function, namely autonomy, competence and relatedness. These needs are viewed as: &gt; &ldquo;a psychological nutrient that is essential for individuals&rsquo; adjustment, integrity, and growth&rdquo; While it&rsquo;s not particularly new, Self-Determination (or SDT) and the idea of intrinsic motivation has gained much more traction in the HR world in the last few years. That&rsquo;s in part because it was popularised by Dan Pink in his book Drive (although his version is slightly different to the original concept).
Why is intrinsic motivation important at work? Intrinsic motivation is considered, generally, to be &ldquo;good&rdquo; motivation as it promotes personal growth and wellbeing. At work it has also been shown to be positively related to positive outcomes &ndash; including employee engagement and performance - as well as being negatively related to negative outcomes - turnover intentions, burnout and work-family conflict. So it&rsquo;s not just that intrinsic motivation is good for business, but relying too heavily on extrinsic motivation (carrot and stick) could be bad for it and can even undermine motivation overall. That is, if you reward someone for doing something that they would do anyway, and you take away the reward, they are less likely to do it than they would have been in the first place! It&rsquo;s probably true that there are some jobs that people wouldn&rsquo;t particularly choose to do if they didn&rsquo;t need the money, and we&rsquo;re generally not queuing up to work for free. This suggests that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not binary states, but indeed that they exist on a continuum and that at different times different aspects of work are relatively intrinsically or extrinsically motivating.
Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Motivation as a continuum, from Self-Determination Theory:
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Let&rsquo;s think about that for a moment. There may be some things that you only do because you&rsquo;re being paid, and not doing it will have repercussions. So you suck it up and do them. This is extrinsic motivation. There are some things that you do because you believe it&rsquo;s important, in the context of your job, to do it well. We certainly don&rsquo;t mind doing it and may generally feel good about it. This is a situation in which both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation may apply. There are other things that you love to do, that happen to be part of your job. This is intrinsic motivation.
What drives intrinsic motivation? So, let&rsquo;s look a bit more closely at intrinsic motivation and the conditions that promote it. There are three basic psychological needs (according to Self-Determination Theory) that when met promote intrinsic motivation and, therefore, wellbeing and personal growth.
Basic Psychological Needs that facilitate Intrinsic Motivation:&nbsp;
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Autonomy is about feeling a degree of freedom to make choices about what you do, and experiencing a sense of integrity, for example with your own values. In this sense, autonomy is not absolute but relative. For example, if you&rsquo;re an accounts assistant your role is constrained, but you may still have opportunities to make small decisions and you shouldn&rsquo;t feel that you have to act against your own sense of ethics. It also doesn&rsquo;t mean that by subscribing to the vision and mission of your company or working towards company objectives, you are not exercising autonomy. It&rsquo;s a matter of how willing you are.
Competence is about experiencing activities that provide opportunities to use and extend your expertise and skills, and to be effective. This means that it&rsquo;s important not only to make sure that people have opportunities to train but to support their effectiveness and remove barriers, such as ineffective processes or an overly critical manager. These can frustrate the need for competence and create a sense of failure or helplessness.
Relatedness is about experiencing the warmth, bonding and care that comes from meaningful relationships. It is both being able to connect with and feel significant to others. This is very close to a feeling of belonging, both in terms of inclusion but also in the emotional connection that is shared with others. Relatedness is, I think, more than about what you get as an individual from your relationships, but also opportunities to give (e.g. support and care) or connect beyond one&rsquo;s self (e.g. with the community, organisation or a cause).
What about Purpose? This last point aligns with Dan Pink&rsquo;s version of the theory, which emphasises Purpose (a greater good or cause) rather than Relatedness. In my view this isn&rsquo;t fundamentally different to the original theory, but it is narrower.
What does this mean for the People Experience? First, there is a strong evidence base to support Self-Determination Theory and the idea that if you create conditions that support autonomy, competence and relatedness at work, it will have a positive impact on motivation and, potentially, wellbeing. So, if you: - Give people to influence their work and exercise choice in ways that are appropriate and proportionate to their role; - Help people to develop and make the most of their skills by supporting them or getting rid of things that get in the way; and - Help people to build relationships at work, to develop shared experiences, care and feel cared for; it&rsquo;s fair to say that you&rsquo;re delivering a positive people experience.
OK, so what about employee engagement? Much of the research into intrinsic motivation and employee engagement places intrinsic motivation as an antecedent (driver) of engagement. That aligns well with the &lsquo;process&rsquo; view of employee engagement, that we make appraisals of our working environment (how well does it satisfy our needs) and that in turn drives engagement. So, broadly speaking, the same conditions that support intrinsic motivation also facilitate employee engagement.
So is Intrinsic Motivation a panacea for organisations? To be honest, I think it&rsquo;s a really nice way of thinking about the work environment. Just three things to guide the way that you: - Manage people - Design work roles and structure - Build systems and process - Implement change.. and so on. No theory is perfect, so it&rsquo;s perhaps not a panacea, but one of the most important things a theory can be is useful. And I think that Intrinsic Motivation, or more precisely Self-Determination Theory, and its three basic psychological needs, provide a really useful platform for thinking about the People Experience. Referring back to our own model, it&rsquo;s no accident that our dimensions of Belonging, Purpose, (Emotional) Connection, Enjoyment, Autonomy and Growth are all pretty closely related to Intrinsic Motivation in some way.
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What's the connection between Intrinsic Motivation and Employee Engagement, and is it the key to a great people experience?

Is Intrinsic Motivation the Key to Employee Engagement?

People Science & Psychology

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Autonomy at work is a key driver of employee engagement, performance, and wellbeing. Start building an autonomy-supportive employee experience today. 