Motivation

I have a hatred for motivational speakers. It is the thinness of their act that disturbs me. Smoke and mirrors, words and tricks that manipulate you and make you feel good for a few hours only to leave you flat and dispirited when the effect wears off.

They exemplify extrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation comes from outside of you. It is something that you have little or no control over, which can play havoc with your moods. Pay is an extrinsic motivator, and a pay rise lifts your spirits and increases your motivation for a few days. And, then it is just a salary.

Real motivation is intrinsic. It is rooted deep in your value system. It relates to who you are as a person with a view of the way of the world should be, your place in that world and what you want to achieve while you are here.

Intrinsic motivation is the force within you that drives all your actions. It rises and falls and it is almost impossible to measure objectively. Many unsuccessful attempts have been made to measure motivation.  But the level of motivation of employees is very important to companies. Well motivated workers are highly productive.

And when motivation levels are thought to be low, the cheap shot is to call in a motivational speaker. It produces instant gratification, employee morale is visibly lifted, everyone is excited and managers think they have done their job. A day or two later when the impact has worn off and nothing tangible has changed the motivation plunges back to where it was before, and productivity slumps.

So you might wonder why I want to introduce you to a motivational metric.

This metric does not measure motivation as its title suggests. It attempts instead to measure employees' perspective of functions that affect motivational levels. This is very different, and the difference is very important, because if you know the functions which affect people's motivational levels, then you might be able to do something to increase their motivation. The table below lists 20 questions:

1    You are fairly paid.
2    Your terms of employment are fair.
3    You clearly understand how your success at work will be measured
4    You have the tools and resources (including staff where appropriate) to do your job successfully.
5    Your manager encourages you to realise your full potential as a person.
6    You have the opportunity at work to develop and master new skills and competencies.
7    Your work is meaningful and purposeful.
8    The work you do is connected to what you think is important in life.
9    Your association with colleagues brings you additional job satisfaction.
10    Your ideas are listened to.
11    You feel valued at work
12    People admire your company.
13    Your job requires your own special talents and abilities.
14    Your work contribution is reviewed regularly.
15    You are given the right level of autonomy.
16    The company culture is one of blame and fear.
17    You are proud of your company.
18    You understand what your company must do to be successful.
19    In your company few status symbol exist which separate people.
20    I clearly understand my company’s vision.

The first two questions in the survey are very different from the rest. They relate to extrinsic factors which overwhelm everything else. If people are not paid fairly, and  are not given fair terms of employment, then there is nothing you can do to improve their attitude to work. Injustice will remove any commitment to the job in hand and productivity will be low.

However, if you get these two factors right then the opportunity of enhancing motivation lays with management capability. I'll pick out just a couple of the 20 questions to show you how it works and you will be able to work out the rest for yourselves. It is available to use free of charge on the web site www.praxis-uk.com/motivation.

Question 8 checks to see if the values of staff are aligned with company values. Collins talks about having the right people on the right bus. A pacifist will be uncomfortable in a bomb factory. A vegetarian will be uncomfortable in an abattoir. Neither will be very productive in company terms.

If your staff score low on question 8, it points to one of two things. Either your recruitment process has ignored a values matching exercise or your company has failed to undertake a values alignment exercise. Either way a low score here points to what managers must undertake. It is nothing you can expect your staff to fix. They can't just pull up their socks. People whose values are out of line must be managed out and then the company must recruit with values in mind.

Question 3 asks if you understand how your success is measured. It probes to find out if a good performance management system is in place and it addresses one of the most de-motivating factors that can infiltrate any work place. If an employee is at all uncertain about what is expected of them, then it eats away at their self-confidence, undermines their motivation and saps any productivity. How fast does anybody run if they are uncertain about the direction they should be going. Low scores on Question 3 throw up a big problem for management, but it should be something they can address.

Question 4 wants to know if people have the right resources. This should be so obvious if people don't have the right tools, their motivation will be low, they just can't do their job without the right tools. Now, if it is so obvious, when was the last time you heard of a survey across an entire workforce to get answers to just these questions?

The questions are obvious; the problem is that management does not ask the questions.  So they don't have a consistent way of identifying issues within their company that sap motivational levels. Running employee surveys like this every 6 month or so can help keep managers grounded in the reality of their business and bring to their attention issues that just beg to be dealt with.

Once this survey has been undertaken management should publish openly the results along with an action plan to resolve the problem areas. This openness to recognizing and resolving issues not only respects and encourages staff commitments but it in itself will improve motivation. Staff will see issues that trouble fellow workers, they will not feel so isolated and best of all they will see that management are listening and intend to do something about it.

The first time the survey is run you can expect a low score on Question 1. This is deliberate. Most people will see it as an opportunity to say they are unfairly paid when they really just mean they would like more money. This is an opportunity for management to point out that the question says fairly and explains how the company established and benchmarked its pay structure. Addressing this straightforward issue will enable managers to test the communication mechanism.

On repeating the survey, this question should score better. It's a control to see if the people are seriously engaging with the process. Repeating the survey provides a measure of management success in addressing the key issues that affect staff motivation. Achieving better scores will equate with higher levels of motivation, and this will correlate with higher productivity and profit.

Similar     staff surveys services exist on the market. They can cost as much as £6000 for 500 employees. At Praxis we believe that motivation and happiness are fundamental rights and processes that help raise these levels should not be sold. Human rights are not surrendered when one enters the workplace.  The motivation metric is unique in that it is a free web based resource.

What is surprising is how few attempts companies make to measure the factors that determine motivation, and even when they do, how rarely they re-run these surveys to see if performance is improving.

Some surveys are very lengthy and time consuming. These are created in a mistaken attempt to catch everything. You can't catch everything and in trying you create a process that can't be repeated. A good survey will fit into a continuous improvement cycle. It is a survey that is easy and cheap to repeat. For then, you can see if your actions are having the desired effect.

If you agree with the link between motivation and productivity, then it is a logical imperative that you put in place a consistent program for monitor performance in this area.

There will be more posting on motivation as it’s so important.