Some helpful studies when thinking of how to motivate employees

While we have been detailing how ZaLife will work, adding the game layer to it and to our Thought Leadership ladder, we have been very conscious about understanding the current thinking and research on motivation and pay.

The current views on motivation are influenced by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  The theory suggests that people are motivated to fulfill their basic, physical needs (food, warmth, sex) first before the need for personal esteem and eventually growth needs (creativity, problem solving) take priority.

The most important contribution to the motivation debate recently has been Drive by Dan Pink. In the book he describes 3 activities to encourage intrinsic motivation:

Autonomy: People want to have control over their work

Mastery: People want to get better at what they do

Purpose: People want to be part of something that is bigger than they are

Providing people with these opportunities at work will help build their intrinsic motivation. Although I feel there are a number of shortcomings in his book (e.g. equating only monetary incentives with extrinsic motivation; extrinsic = bad, intrinsic = good) it is important to be aware of the ideas. He covers the key ideas of the book in his TED talk. I prefer the live animation version by the RSA.

However, providing activities that build intrinsic motivation will be pointless unless the essentials like food, health, financial security, and home (Maslow’s safety and physiological needs) are taken care of by compensation. Only then will people focus on satisfying their intrinsic motivations.

Companies that have gotten the balance right are few and far between. But there are some interesting studies on pay, bonuses, rewards and equity that help understand how best to utilize these from an employee and a company perspective:

• Companies that target stock options to specific groups of employees produce no improvement in performance. This is possibly due to the ‘free-rider’ effect. One way to mitigate against this is to link the granting of stock options to the performance of the company
• Financial rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation. In a 1970s study by Mark Lepper, participants were invited to play games for fun. Rewards were then added, however once they were taken away participants stopped playing. When performance was rewarded, a fun game became work
• Even though employees prefer cash bonuses, “a gift-in-kind results in a significant and substantial increase in productivity” over cash bonuses. This suggests that the value of the gift is less important than the fact that a gift is actually given. The study suggests that that from an employer’s perspective it is beneficial to provide extra benefits to employees as they “are more likely to reciprocate positively” to these

The challenging task for us with ZaLife will be to maintain the element of fun and ensure that employees feel valued by Kuliza and rewarded for completing their missions!