Are Happy Employees Motivated Employees?

When was the last time you felt excited, motivated and extremely keen to be at work?  Chances are it was when you had a job or project that really interested you, you had control over what you did and the way you did it, and you didn’t have any worries about “over zealous boss” interference or lack of job security.  It’s a great feeling and we can all probably relate stories of how and when we were most “motivated” at work.   

But as managers, do we consciously try to provide this same level of motivation for all of our employees?  Or, are we merely fixated on striving to achieve the deadlines, budgets and targets that are set for us (and that seem to be getting tougher and tougher and placing more and more stress on us and our people), and forgetting what it was really like when we worked in an environment that was truly “motivational”. 

My challenge to practising managers, is to think back to when they were most motivated at work and identify the reasons why (list them on a sheet of paper as dot points).  Then, set about implementing these same conditions for their own people.  (Draw up your own list now and see how it compares with mine) 

I’ve issued this challenge to managers over the last 20 years in management development forums and invariably their “motivational conditions” they identify are: 

• Autonomy – the chance to take control over a complete project or unit of work in which I am really interested
• Responsibility – for setting goals and targets and being accountable for achieving them
• Recognition – for achieving meaningful results
• Development – of my skills, knowledge and capabilities to their full potential  

I then ask them to identify the things that really irritate and annoy them and (often) change what could have been a motivating workplace into a drudgery.  They are: 

• Bosses who do not recognise them for their efforts, or worse still, take the credit themselves
• A lack of feeling of “team”, ie., “we are in this together”
• Constant implied or implicit threats of demotion or dismissal
• Insufficient salary (by comparison to others in the firm or in the industry) 

If these sound familiar, then you’re right!  Frederick Herzberg in his classic HBR article “Once More, How do you Motivate Employees?” (harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu) came up with two similar sets of lists nearly forty years ago that he labelled “Motivators” and “Satisfiers”.   

Do they hold true today?  Recent research into the turnover rates for young employees (20 – 30 yrs) shows that in some industries, the turnover rate of young employees is as high as 25% annually due to lack of perceived career development and training, and limited opportunities for involvement in other areas of the firm and their profession.  These younger people, by comparison to their predecessors:

• Are more opportunistic in taking new jobs.
• Are more mobile.
• Have greater expectations.
• Are easily bored.

Andrew Heathcote (www.brw.com.au/stories) in answer to this challenge suggests that managers need to:

Communicate:

• Be honest during interviews.
• Be serious about performance reviews.
• Do more career mapping.
• Create a forum to develop a greater spirit of involvement.

Tailor the workplace:

• Provide more job rotation.
• Arrange more rotation between offices.
• Develop specific training.
• Introduce variety.
• Develop forums for social interaction.

Be flexible:

• Consider providing sabbaticals (so they can travel without resigning).
• Increase the availability of unpaid leave. 

So today’s younger employee is not so different from the generation who manage them – maybe they want their motivation and satisfaction a little faster! 

By the way, notice that the majority of items on Andrew’s list are what Herzberg called “Motivators”.  In fact the only two that could be termed real “Satisfiers” are the last two – sabbaticals and unpaid leave. 

But, to return to my initial question, does motivation equate with happiness?  Richard Layard (www.pfd.co.uk/clients/layardr/b-aut.html) suggests that work plays a very important part in our happiness and that a lot of our happiness actually comes from the work we do.  And the job that we do is affected by how we are allowed to do it.  In addition, he found that in regard to the “Satisfiers”:

• Not having a job when you should have one, is much worse than suffering a sudden drop in income
• People who feel insecure about retaining their job, suffer a loss of happiness (relative to those who do feel secure) that is 50% greater than the loss of happiness suffered by people whose income drops by a third. 

Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick (www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/ staff/faculty/oswald/homejobs.pdf) confirms some of the importance of the “satisfiers”: 

• Having a lot of job security is important to feeling a high degree of satisfaction with your job
• People with relatively high incomes or university degrees tend to get more satisfaction
• Women tend to be more satisfied than men
• The self-employed tend to be more satisfied
• People who work in a small workplace tend to be more satisfied than those who work for large employers
• Working at home tends to lead to higher satisfaction
• A job that involves dealing with people tends to bring higher satisfaction 

Herzberg would be very pleased with the results of the amazing amount of today’s research that confirms his contention that it is important for managers to concentrate on both the “Motivators” and the “Satisfiers” if one is to have happy and motivated employees. 

The message?  Managers, revisit your own list of “Motivators”  Start working on implementing the things on that list of your’s with your employees today! 

If you would like to find out how motivated and satisfied your people are, you can do so with a simple feedback profile such as CHECKpoint™ (nationallearning.com.au/index_files/EmployeeFeedbackandMotivation.htm). CHECKpoint™ has been developed on the work of Herzberg and another great social psychologist, D.C. McLelland.  It not only provides feedback on employee motivation and satisfaction, but also how to maintain these and address any problematic issues.