In one of the most publicised business surveys of 2008, the Gallup Organization found that over 80% of the Australian workforce was not engaged, and that the cost of "employee disengagement" to the Australian economy was… wait for it… around AUS$30 billion per annum. The Australian stats:
Interestingly, the results were very similar to many other developed economies…
Over their years of research, Gallup found that bad management was the main cause of the low levels of disengagement, showing quite clearly that engaged workers are very satisfied with their managers, while disengaged employees are extremely dissatisfied with theirs.
With so many people being demoralised by bad managers, business authors (including Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, Marcus Buckingham, Clayton Christensen, Jack Weltch) have come to the fore to talk about the need for managers to become more in-tune with managing people as people, with motivations that go beyond money or carrot-and-stick incentives.
The thinking on human motivation, as a scientific filed, is very detailed and the Wikipedia entry is worth visiting if you ever have trouble sleeping. We think (or at least we’d like to argue anyway) that there are 3 thought leaders worth exploring, which are central to understanding the real cause of why so many people are disengaged.
As a super-condensed summary, these are:
The Hierarchy of Needs provides us with a framework to understand the basics for engagement. When we look at layers 1 and 2, we are talking about (in Maslow's terms) 'lower order' needs — things that will make a person very dissatisfied if they are not met. Layers 3, 4 and 5 are what Maslow called 'higher order' needs — these are the ones that contribute to engagement. However, in order to reach the highest level of engagement, a state called self-actualisation, Maslow believed that we needed to understand our inner drives and desires.
Hygiene Factors:
Motivators:
If we compare Herzberg's theory to Maslow's, they are essentially saying the same thing: there are certain factors that cause dissatisfaction if they are not met, but the factors that lead to engagement are related more to our inner drives and desires.
Pink describes three things as leading to Motivation 3.0:
The point, the common thread, to the work on human motivation by Maslow, Herzberg, Pink and many others, is the fundamental importance of people’s intrinsic motivators.
Intrinsic simply means that the motivation comes from within; it is driven by interest in the task for reasons of personal importance, rather than external pressure by management.
Many organisations rely on the traditional command and control, or rewards-punishment management practices. They're often draped in things like flexi-time, working from home, and Hawaiian shirt days, but ultimately the drive behind them is extrinsic: "If you do this for me, I'll do that for you."
Pink makes a great comparison of linking this kind of extrinsic motivation to coal. It is cheap and pretty efficient for producing a quick result, however, it produces a lot of pollution (dissatisfies) and there is a finite supply. Intrinsic motivation, by contrast, is more like renewable energy — it comes from within the individual so there is no limit to its ability to motivate that individual.
Maslow, Herzberg, and Pink have all written about the need for work to be of emotional significance to the individual. The power of intrinsic motivators is grounded in the fact that they are different for each individual, and requires managers to get to know what they are for each person. Leaders that are able to tap into the power of intrinsic motivators are the only ones that will be able to produce sustainable, long-term productivity and engagement in their organisations.
The Workplace Motivators profile involves taking a 10-minute questionnaire online. Once complete, you will receive up to a 24-page, personalised report on your core motivators with tips on how to be more effective when working with others. No hassle, no obligation, no pushy sales person — all done online.
While the Motivators profile still exists, we now offer an updated version called Driving Forces. The original Motivators profile focused on six core human motivators, whereas Driving Forces expands this to twelve factors. Learn more about our assessment tools here.