What motivates people to work

Work the motivation: 10 ways to keep your team inspired

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We have all been in that zone. You’re busy with work, and a deadline is approaching. You feel sharp, productive, and energized. Your work motivation is high.

You’re enjoying the work itself and are feeling great about how much progress you’re making.

We call this mental state flow: where an individual is completely immersed in their enjoyment of an activity.

“Motivation” feels almost beside the point — your interaction with the work itself motivates you.

Unfortunately, we’ve also all experienced the opposite feeling when we’re doing something we don’t enjoy.

Time drags on, and you’re keenly aware of it. You’re not any closer to finishing the task. Maybe you’re finding it hard to get started or are dreading the next step.

What is different between these two descriptions? It’s a factor of how motivated we feel. When we feel motivated, we give our best effort and go the extra mile.

If you’re a manager, you’ve probably noticed how employee satisfaction impacts human motivation. You’ve no doubt seen a drop in employee productivity when this happens.

Let’s take a look at what work motivation is, why it matters, and how you can foster it in your employees.

The concept of work motivation

The concept of motivation has a central position across the field of psychology. Motivation is about our choices: where we expend energy and how we prioritize.

These choices are especially relevant in the world of work.

Being highly motivated at work means we try harder to do our best. Sometimes we are motivated by external factors such as how much we’re being paid, the benefits we are receiving through work, or whether we receive recognition from a supervisor or positive feedback.

Other times, internal factors motivate us, such as how much we enjoy what we’re doing or how important we believe the work is for the company.

Work motivation has a direct impact on our performance. Organizational psychologists have noted that an employee’s performance is impacted by:

This relationship is often expressed as the equation:

MOTIVATION X ABILITY = PERFORMANCE

In other words, it’s not enough to have the skills to do your job. You have to be motivated to put your skills to work.

This is even more important when the tasks are difficult or the work needed is ambiguous because the needs and conditions are changing.

Motivation helps to propel us through challenges and overcome doubt and uncertainty on new tasks.

Why is motivation important?

Given the benefits of having a highly motivated workforce, it’s in a company’s best interest to maximize employee engagement and motivation.

Improving workplace motivation has a number of benefits, including these top five outcomes:

1. Increased performance

A motivated employee will put forth their best effort and generally perform at higher levels.

We can differentiate between a person’s maximal performance and their typical performance.

When individuals are motivated, there is very little difference between the two. That means that they regularly perform to the best of their abilities. But when motivation is low, employees rarely demonstrate their maximal performance.

2. Increased employee engagement

Higher levels of motivation generally translate into employees who are more engaged with their work.

This means that companies will see:

3. Increased creativity, innovation, and problem-solving

Motivated employees exhibit higher levels of creativity and innovation and are better problem-solvers.

Because they work with greater passion and feel connected to the work they’re doing, they put more energy into these activities.

In the face of challenges, motivated employees take on new behaviors and are creative and flexible in looking for workarounds. As a result, they are able to move past inconveniences.

4. Increased job satisfaction

Employees who show higher levels of motivation also report higher levels of job satisfaction. Employees who are more satisfied are more efficient, have higher levels of productivity and care more about what they’re doing.

5. Increased employee well-being

Employees who are motivated report higher states of well-being and better mental fitness. When they are energized and excited to do their work, their physical and mental health improves.

In fact, this relationship becomes cyclical.

Higher motivation leads to an increased sense of well-being. At the same time, improving employee well-being leads to higher levels of motivation.

The downward spiral of low work motivation

Work motivation is an important lever for managers, and motivating others is a key leadership skill. Let’s consider the consequences of a demotivated workplace. In addition to losing the benefits listed above, there are other costs.

Decreased performance

This hurts in the present, leading to higher costs, lower quality work, and missed revenue opportunities. But it also hurts in the long term.

That’s because companies with unmotivated employees are unprepared to respond to changing conditions.

They’ll have a less adaptable and future-ready workforce and won’t be ready to take on future opportunities.

Lower employee engagement

When employee engagement is low, it leads to:

Reduced innovation and creativity

As a result of reduced creativity and ideas, fewer interesting opportunities or challenges will emerge. This narrows the innovative and creative potential of the organization.

Lower job satisfaction

This hurts recruiting and retention and can lead to safety and quality issues.

Lack of motivation

Just as motivation can be contagious, so can be the lack of it. A few unmotivated team members, if left unaddressed, can demotivate others around them.

Others may start to question themselves for working so hard or question the ability of the team to deliver impact with such low commitment.

Types of work motivation

There are numerous theories of motivation across the field of psychology. Several specifically relate to the psychology of the workplace.

We’ll explore two such theories of motivation because they can help us understand what employees are experiencing.

The first motivation theory we’ll look at is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. The second is Herzberg’s two-factor model.

Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation

In its simplest definition, intrinsic motivation refers to being motivated by the activity itself. The work is its own reward.

Extrinsic motivation refers to doing work for a reward other than the joy, learning, or meaning that comes from doing the work itself. In other words, an external reward.

Anything we receive for doing work can be considered an extrinsic motivator.

Motivation examples include:

This is an important differentiation because of their impact on performance.

People tend to perform better when they’re intrinsically motivated because they care deeply about the activity. They are more likely to lose themselves in their work and experience a state of flow.

Herzberg’s two-factor model:

This model demonstrates that there are factors that lead to high motivation and job satisfaction and ones that lead to the opposite.

However, they aren’t the same factors.

For example, the factors that lead to higher motivation include:

When these factors are present, we feel more motivated to do our best work. Herzberg called these factors Motivators and demonstrated their contribution to job satisfaction.

Herzberg contrasted these Motivators with what he called Hygiene Factors.

These are the features that are needed to be present in order to avoid job dissatisfaction.

Hygiene Factors include:

While the presence of these factors doesn’t lead to higher levels of motivation, the absence of them leads to lower levels of motivation.

This model allows us to think through the aspects of the workplace that need to be present to meet basic needs (Hygiene.)

Once these are met, we can strive for those factors that lead to feelings of growth and achievement (Motivators.)

Losing motivation

Part of learning to manage people is learning how to motivate resistant employees to do what you need.

But motivation is often not about laziness or work ethic. At times, even the hardest working employees can lose their motivation.

In fact, maybe you’ve found yourself feeling less motivated than usual recently. 2020 brought challenges that most of us have never seen before.

It’s not surprising that these stressors have led many employees to feel more overwhelmed and less motivated to do their best work. While they still put in their time, they are contributing less energy and passion.

Besides exhaustion and overwhelm, what causes good, formerly-motivated employees to lose their drive? Let’s take a look at five culprits.

1. Lack of impact, purpose, or meaning

Many employees will work hard if they believe they are making a difference.

This can be a difference to their colleagues, the company, the customer, or even the world. If time passes and an expected impact doesn’t materialize, or the impact disappears, motivation might fade as well.

2. Disempowerment and restrictive conditions

In the performance equation above, motivation is a separate factor from ability. In reality, if your ability to do something decreases significantly, that also affects motivation.

This might be from a loss of resources, tighter timelines, or new policies that prevent collaborating with customers.

3. Mastery / lack of growth

Many highly talented employees enjoy challenging themselves and learning rapidly. This is especially true if the learning positions them to achieve professional aspirations.

The harder the quest, the more motivated they are.

If they find themselves in a situation where they are no longer being stretched, they may miss the constant learning and become significantly less motivated.

4. Negative work conditions

Decreased sense of connection to the organization or teammates and a lack of belonging can take the air out of motivation.

This type of damage might be a result of:

5. Fear or threat

Fear can be a powerful motivator in the moment, but it is hard to sustain. It tends to shut us down into tunnel-vision. Fear doesn’t create the conditions for adaptive, creative performance that reinforce motivation.

How to get motivated to work

What changes can we make in our work environment to continue motivating employees?

To understand this, we first need to ask: what motivates employees?

The good news is that there are clear steps we can take. Here are ten things managers and leaders can do in order to improve motivation. Five relate to the work itself, and five are about how you treat employees.

5 ways to increase motivation through the work

In order to tap into employees’ intrinsic motivation, first, we turn our attention to the work itself:

5 ways to increase motivation through employee relationships

Let’s turn our attention to how we treat employees and how we can use our relationships with them to increase motivation:

We can acknowledge the progress we’re making and celebrate how far we’ve come as we achieve smaller, more specific goals.

It’s important to check in with employees on how they perceive your efforts and how motivated they feel. Organizations should conduct engagement surveys that measure employees’ perceptions and reactions.

Leaders are then responsible for using the data from these surveys. This allows them to look for opportunities to consider how they’re treating their teams and address key motivators.

Work motivation creates better work and happier employees

Motivation is contagious.

Employees who are engaged in their work help other employees remain engaged in their work.

Whether we’re helping ourselves or our teams, it’s a good idea to know how to master a lack of motivation and turn it into great performance.

Ready to boost employee work motivation but struggling with where to start? Check out our coaching services to learn more about how you can grow both personally and professionally.

What Motivates People To Work?

It’s funny that despite being such an important part of the economy and our lives, not much thought is given to why we work. It is generally taken as a given while economists focus on more important work. It is usually assumed that work is something that people don’t want to do and they must be compensated with money to make them do it. No one would work unless they had to, its only the need of money that gets people up in the money. It is an article of faith among economists that people respond to incentives and this usually refers to monetary incentives. After all, didn’t the Soviet Union fall because people weren’t paid enough and therefore motivated enough to work? Simply, if you want to motivate someone to work, you must pay them to do so.

These are not one-off flukes. A study of 100 published results found that overall, increasing rewards, decreased motivation. Why did this happen? Part of the reason comes from the fact that offering a reward, narrows the focus on the goal (after all, that is the point). However, while this narrow focus is beneficial for routine and repetitive tasks, it is damaging for tasks that require creativity or cognitive skills. The reward also increase the pressure and stress of the task. But more importantly, these studies suggest that money is not the main motivation people have. It seems to motivate us on a basic level (after all we would starve without money) but beyond a low threshold, more money doesn’t make us work harder.

Secondly, people want to have a purpose. They want to feel that their work means something and that they have something to show for it. A serious problem with modern office work is that a lot of the time you don’t have anything physical to show at the end of the day. This can sometimes lead to a feeling that the work is purposeless or just endless drudgery. When people feel their work has some meaning then they will work harder regardless of the compensation. As the saying goes “If you do what you love, you never have to work a day in your life.”

Dan Ariely ran an experiment to test this. He took a group of people and offered to pay them for each Lego set they built. The first group built an average of 11 sets which were put away and disassembled after the people left. However, for the second group as soon as they completed the set, it was disassembled before their eyes. This made it clear to them that their task was pointless. Despite receiving the same reward for their work as the first group, the second group built only 7 sets. In a similar experiment, Ariely had students complete problem set before handing them up to the experimenter who would either A) briefly look at the paper B) completely ignore it or C) shred it immediately. The students were paid (a declining amount) for each problem they solved. Such was the discouragement from seeing their work shredded before their eyes that the people in group C needed twice as much money as group A to keep going. Interestingly, having your work ignored was as discouraging as having it shredded in front of you.

Even if we didn’t need money, people would still work. It defines us, gives us meaning, a sense of achievement and something to be proud of. Money alone can’t motivate people if they have no control over their job or feel that it serves no purpose. The evidence shows that it can often make things worse.

What Motivates People to Work?

Introduction

The majority of people will have to work for most of their lives in order to take care of themselves and their families. They go to work for an obvious reason: They need money. They need it to buy groceries, pay bills and take vacations. This brings about a common question: “Besides money, what motivates people to work?”

Feeling Appreciated

When an employee is doing a good job and trying their hardest, he or she likes to know that management is not taking this for granted. He likes to feel appreciated for the work that he is doing. This could mean a bonus at the end of the year, or it could be something as simple as the manager saying “thank you”.

Keeping Work Interesting

Employees are generally more likely to be motivated to work if they find their work interesting. The easiest way for management to keep employees interested is to assign them a variety of tasks. Doing the same task over and over gets extremely tedious after a while. By having a variety of functions to perform, an employee is much less likely to lose motivation.

Working with Others

When employees like the people they work with, they are more likely to be motivated to work. A workplace study found that women place more importance on their working relationships than men do. The study showed that 60% of women and 44% of men felt that their working relationships influenced their motivation to work.

Positive Work Environment

Working at a company that has a positive work environment is very important to many employees. Some of the things that can effect the environment include: office size, management’s attitudes toward their employees, parking spaces, noise level and air quality. For example, if an employee’s office is cramped and dirty, and it is located near a noisy production line, she is not likely to be motivated by this type of atmosphere.

Helping Others

Many employees feel that being able to help others is one of the factors that motivates them to work. As in every aspect of life, the majority of people feel that helping others makes them feel better about themselves. This goes for the work environment as well. By being able to help customers, patients or other coworkers, an employee feels that the work he is doing is worthwhile and is thus more motivated to work.

Empowerment

When employees are involved in important decision-making processes they are more likely to feel empowered. Empowerment in the workplace allows employees to make decisions about various aspects of their job. It also involves being provided with the training and information required to make informed decisions. This gives the employee more responsibility and provides her with a greater sense of achievement.

What Motivates People to Work?

What motivates employees varies between each individual. One person may feel that it is very important to like the people that he works with, while someone else may think that it is more important to feel appreciated and take pride in his work. These are just some of the factors that motivate employees to work. Each person is different, but if managers takes these factors into consideration they are likely going to have a much more motivated workforce.

What Motivates You to Work?

That paycheck will never be big enough if it’s the only reason you’re going to work.

Each of us respond to different drives and motivations, but there are many drives we can choose from that not only make our careers more fruitful but also more enjoyable. Those people who experience the “Sunday Blues” are in careers which may provide security and certain freedoms, but they lack joy and fulfillment. Sunday comes around and many of us immediately begin dreading our work week; thereby, ruining the rest of their weekend for ourselves and those we are close with. There is no point in staying in careers that make us miserable. There is so much opportunity in the world. We have to find the correct motivations to go out and make these opportunities happen.

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1. Money

Initially, the main thing we view as the most worthy motivating force inspiring us to work hard is money. Making money is a noble and necessary motivation which directs us into our careers and motivates us to stay in them. Money is a tool we all need for survival, but earning money also provides us with feelings of status, success and achievement. Money provides us the freedoms we crave in terms of the lifestyles we want to live. The one thing money doesn’t’t bring is happiness, as we can see from the many well-known people in our society who appear to have it all, but the decisions they make clearly show us that money is far from the only motivation that drives us to work hard and to feel happy.

2. Purpose

To live a truly fulfilled life we need to have a sense of purpose. Those without purpose live with more depression and feelings of aimlessness than others. When we have purpose we feel directed and more certain about our lives and the directions in which we’re heading. Purpose brings us deeper feelings of security than money could ever offer because money comes and goes. While positions and or circumstances wax and wane creating uncomfortable uncertainties, having purpose keeps us moving forward motivated to reach our bigger picture.

3. Making a difference

There is nothing more fulfilling than knowing that what we contribute in this world makes a significant difference. There are many careers that provide us with the money we desire but that also may come along with a ton of unrewarding stress. Ultimately, we spend the majority of our time in our lives at work so we may as well find a way to make our career meaningful for ourselves and others. The greatest gift of working in careers which give back to our communities is the way it changes and impact our own lives. When we see that what we contribute makes a difference, it makes our careers and our purpose feel that much more rewarding. When we are inspired we are more motivated to get back to the grind each new day.

4. Responsibility

Our career may be stressful, but being irresponsible is even more stressful. When we are irresponsible we dig ourselves into holes that are impossible to get out of; whereas, when we have a solid career and sense of responsibility we trust we can pull ourselves out of just about anything financially. Scott Peck is his book The Road Less Traveled makes the point that there is no such thing as an irresponsible psychologically healthy person. Self-management brings personal development and self-actualization. Being responsible brings us to a sense of balance, feelings of success, motivation and self-trust.

5. Challenge

We grow the most in our motivation when we are optimally challenged. Being in careers which feel like groundhog day every day do not provide enough challenge for us to make any new efforts or changes to our behavioral patterns around working hard. In his book Resilience navy seal Eric Grietens discusses how when we are optimally challenged it is natural for us to rise to the occasion. We want to see and prove that we can leap over whatever hurdles are placed in front of us to glean the satisfaction of having a win at the end game. These wins may be tough to come by and we may fail along our road of challenge, but this is exactly how we develop the resiliency that keeps us motivated and striving for what is next.

6. Community

The work environment, no matter the field we’re in, connects us with other people. Success is never a one-man-job. Being connected individually or to a team brings us into relationships that are meaningful and also to mutually satisfying goals to strive for. As humans we are designed for connection and communication. Community brings us a sense of belonging, the satisfying purpose of our role and increased communication, problem-solving and negotiation skills.

7. Acknowledgement

The greatest reward of all is acknowledgment. We all need, desire and want to be acknowledged when we have performed well and/or when we haven’t. The work environment is the one place that can motivate us from deep within. Acknowledgement can come in the form of a compliment, a raise, a promotion, club trips, bonuses, or support and encouragement. Personal growth and higher visions of what we’re capable of achieving cannot come without the all important ingredient of acknowledgment. Acknowledgment gives us something meaningful to work for or towards. in my book Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life I explain that acknowledgement is our yardstick for success.

8. Duty

Having a sense of duty, a place to go, things to accomplish and achieve is a great motivation. Having a sense of duty is necessary for the development of a strong identity. Having a career provides us an important role to fulfill that is backed by strong values. When we live our lives motivated by strong values we are given the opportunity to build and define our character. Having a sense of duty is what motivates us to be good to ourselves, honest in our approach to relationships and to develop a positive reputation. There is nothing that will speak more highly of us than our character and what we stand for.

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What motivates people to work

Discover what motivates people and how to inspire them

Thankfully, people like Daniel Pink, best-selling business and human behavior author, do think about these things – a lot. And the people at the Royal Society for Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce turned his lecture on things that motivate people into a great animated short.

In this fascinating video, Daniel discusses the results of scientific studies on what drives people to work hard at their jobs. Surprise: It’s not money – it’s tapping into a person’s passions and need for significance, growth and contribution.

The theory and science behind what motivates people

Studying what motivates people to work leads to some unbelievably interesting conclusions. Science points to several realities that go against conventional beliefs. For example, as workers (and consumers), we are actually not as easily given to manipulations as “pop” behavioral economics might have us believe.

Push vs. pull

“There’s an art to mastering life. It’s the art of fulfillment. Success without fulfillment is failure.” – Tony Robbins

Push motivations are our obligations in life: We need money for rent or the mortgage. We need to buy groceries. Pull motivations are more compelling – they’re “something so exciting, so attractive, something you want so bad that it can get you up early and keep you up late,” says Tony. They are what motivates people to join the Peace Corps, build a successful business and find true fulfillment.

Pain vs. pleasure

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.” – Tony Robbins

We would live in an amazing world if the things that motivate people were all positive, empowering push motivations. But to fully answer the question “ What are people motivated by? ” we cannot ignore pain versus pleasure. The truth is that people are much more motivated to avoid pain than they are to gain pleasure. Instead of responding to punishment s ystems to (de)incentivize various behaviors, humans respond better to reward systems that incentivize them for engaging their creativity and natural abilities.

13 things that motivate people

1. Autonomy

2. Mastery

Whether you are the owner of a small business or an employee of a growing firm, a feeling of mastery on the job is an important part of what motivates people to work. To effectively learn how to inspire people, make sure everyone has the tools and information they need to excel on the job.

3. Purpose

What motivates you to work hard? For almost all of us, the best incentive is one of Tony Robbins’ pivotal business growth concepts: purpose in the workplace. It is not money that ultimately keeps people working hard. What drives people is the sense of purpose and contribution they feel on the job. Invest in employee retention and morale, and you’ll understand not only what motivates people in life but also what creates happy, dedicated employees.

4. Fear

5. Opposition

We all know this personality type: you tell them they can’t do something, and they go out and excel at it. Opposition is just the thing that motivates people like this. They don’t want to experience the pain of proving you right. Barbara Corcoran’s ex told her she’d never succeed without him. Then she built a multi-million-dollar real estate empire.

6. Competition

Opposition is proving to yourself that you can do something when others doubt you. Competition is proving that you’re the best, period. They often go hand in hand. People with competitive spirits want to avoid the pain of losing. Bill Gates and Richard Branson are famously competitive – and we’d say it’s worked out for them.

7. Necessity

People have physical needs. We need a roof over our heads. We need food and water. We need to avoid the discomfort that’s caused when we don’t have these things. Often what motivates people is the fear of losing these things. Unlike the factors above, necessity probably isn’t inspiring people to greatness, but if you’re an employer, you can still use it to motivate your team.

8. Certainty

We all need certainty to feel safe and secure and to have people we can depend on. But like necessity, certainty can be what motivates people to achieve less, not more. When you feel secure in your job, you don’t want to take a chance on a more fulfilling role. When you feel safe in your relationship, it’s easier to ignore that you don’t feel fulfilled. Things that motivate people aren’t always positive.

9. Vision

10. Passion

Without passion, life is boring. We need passion in relationships and passion for our work, family and giving back. It’s what gives us boundless energy. It’s the reason Tony can do six-day, 12-hour events, no problem. He’s pulled to it by his passion.

11. Significance

12. Growth

13. Contribution

How to motivate others

What motivates people to change?

What does the research have to say about what motivates people to change? Psychology Today reports that behavioral change occurs along two dimensions : internal/external and positive/negative. These dimensions combine in four distinct ways, each producing a different effect on drive.

What motivates you to work hard may differ from the specific things that motivate others, but ultimately, what drives people can be traced back to the three main factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Great leaders will use their creativity, emotional intelligence and the power of deep listening to uncover what matters most to their team – then enact powerful strategies to get the results they desire.

Team Tony cultivates, curates and shares Tony Robbins’ stories and core principles, to help others achieve an extraordinary life.