Driven By Intrinsic Motivation – A Key For Being An Engaged Employee

Engaging employees at various levels has been a great need of any organization. Organizations invest huge resources to carry out employee engagement surveys or employee opinion surveys to assess employee engagement and motivation levels. Organizations exert lot of efforts to work on enhancing employees’ enthusiasm by thriving to improve various organizational drivers. All these efforts led to some positive shift in employees’ perception regarding organizational drivers and enablers.

This is like a double edged sword. On one side it can create some positive impact towards employees’ engagement and motivation. On the other side it leads towards increasing employees expectations. Over the years these expectations keep increasing which at times might be difficult to meet. After all the efforts the organizations make, there still are employees who may not be enthused or driven.

There are some organizations who share these concerns for their employees at various levels. Recently while interacting with few heads of the organizations, they shared similar concern with me i.e. the organization is doing sufficient (as seen by organization) yet the employees are not motivated or engaged and retention is a challenge.

This brings us to think about the core of it i.e. inspiring and driving individuals/ employees.

Based on theoretical framework, there are various engagement models that have been developed over a period of time to address this aspect.

As I see, what the organizations are working on is influencing individuals through external motivators in form of various organizational drivers and initiatives like; talent management and career advancement, learning and development, open and transparent communication, quality of leadership, recognition for achievement, facilitative work environment and HR practices, freedom & autonomy, healthy workplace relationship, managing workload, role clarity, fairness of rewards, competitive pay and benefits, performance feedback, work life balance, work security, etc.

Though these extrinsic factors are important, it may not always be the one which can instill zeal and passion among individuals.

So what can stimulate motivation within individual?

Looking at some of my personal experiences and my observations about individuals that I have directly/ indirectly worked with indicates that it is the intrinsic motivation that drives the person.

Intrinsic motivation is the internal desire, urge or the internal guiding force that moves the person. It creates zeal and passion to exert that extra effort or go an extra mile to achieve ones goals and purposes.

Intrinsic motivation comes from the awareness of self – what one values, believes in, lives for or pays most attention to – be it in personal or professional life and living upto it. This acts as a guiding principle for various decisions, actions, priorities or choices one makes in life. Often living by these values, beliefs and purpose helps individual to remain committed and engaged at work or in personal life; besides guiding the person when dealing with dilemma or conflicting situations.

How to stir the intrinsic motivation?

So who should work towards driving internal motivation of the person? Well, it is in interest of both – the individual himself and the organization that one be intrinsically motivated. Hence both the individual and the organization (with help of mentors and leaders) may initiate the process of driving intrinsic motivation of the individual.

Inorder to be driven intrinsically, an individual himself or a mentor and a leader can facilitate an individual by helping one to reflect and act on following aspects;

1. Being aware of self and identifying one’s values and purpose:

There is a quest that one has to find answer to ‘Who am I’. This may look like a spiritual aspect however, at the core every one of us seeks for this answer. Who am I may cover various aspects like ones’ personality, strengths and limitations, values (e.g. make a difference, responsibility, commitment, speed, accuracy, freedom, excellence, fairness), purpose, etc. In this, our values guide our actions and decisions. They are like our mental compass which provides us the direction, helps us to plan for and move towards our goals be it personal or professional life.

The values and purpose also aid us in dealing with dilemma at different points in time and go beyond to meet the need of those values. In our everyday life, this element gets diluted at times as we tend to focus on accomplishing regular tasks (which are important though) without remaining aware about our core.

An individual himself or a mentor and a leader can help the individual to explore and answer following;

• How do I describe myself? What kind of person am I? What are my strengths or limitations?
• What do I value in life? Which values I strive to live for most of the time? Which values I may not/ do not compromise with, irrespective of situations?
• What do I want to live for? What purpose drives me?

2. Finding opportunities and ways to honour values and purpose:

Conscious awareness about oneself, especially about ones’ purpose and drive, makes the actions more meaningful and enjoyable. This evokes passion and zeal to achieve more meaningful outcome. It is thus useful and needed that one finds opportunities and approaches to honour ones’ values.

An individual who is self-driven actively seeks for situations and ways to use the values and live for the purpose. To drive individuals, mentors and leaders can help them by providing assignments and task that relate with ones values. Besides, they can as well help individuals to leverage on their strengths and values in their existing tasks and responsibilities.

Many times individuals look for such opportunities outside their current job. However, all this can be done in one’s existing tasks, assignments and job.

Reflecting on following questions may help move closer to values and purpose;

• Which actions of mine would help me move closer to my purpose and goal?
• What do I do to honour/ live by my values and purpose in my current job or conditions?
• What do I do to live by my purpose and values in my day to day work?
• How do I fulfill my current tasks, assignments or job by leveraging my strengths and values?

3. Taking actions to live by values and purpose:

Just thinking or planning does not get desired outcome. One needs to exert sustained effort to live upto the purpose and the values. A well planned approach supported with action is what is required for achieving goals that are in line with ones’ purpose and values. The internal driving force to keep moving closer to the goal and the continuous and, steady focus is what tends to inspire the individual to keep going.

The individual should in this case keep taking actions in the planned direction and intermittently review/ monitor oneself against the plan. A mentor or a leader should be observant about individuals’ actions and help review actions if required. It would be helpful to reflect on following questions to see if one is moving in desired direction;

• How much effort am I exerting to meet the goal related to my values and purpose?
• Am I moving in the direction of what I had planned to honour my values and purpose?
• Are my actions in line with my values and purpose?

4. Reviewing manifestations and outcome of actions:

To see the value of ones’ actions, it is essential that one reviews the outcome and manifestations of the same. This would help to see if the actions are yielding the fruits that one wanted to accomplish. When actions are in line with the desired outcome, it further triggers motivation to work towards those aspects.

An individual and a mentor or a leader may help the individual to review outcome based on actions taken using following questions;

• What has it lead to when I have lived by my values, goals and purpose?
• What would it mean to move away from my purpose and what would it do to me?

To share a personal experience, ‘Make a Difference’ is one of my top 10 values. This one value has aided me in selection of a career I am in, make specific career transitions and remain engaged in it, deal with dilemma at different points in time and go beyond to meet the need of this value. This has resulted in immense satisfaction and joy of the work I do.

Awareness, insight and actions based on these reflections and actions help an individual to be more intrinsically driven. It is thought that living by values and purpose is difficult and is an ideal situation which is difficult to achieve. Well, it may be difficult but not impossible. Besides, if it leads to more internal satisfaction and joy, it is worth working in this direction.

Happy reflection!

– Ms. Uravi Raichandani (Head, Assessment & Coaching)

To know more, please contact uravi@namanhr.com

Quality Control For Employee Engagement

“Engagement is about creating opportunities for employees to connect with their colleagues, managers and wider organisation. It is also about creating an environment where employees are motivated to connect with their work and really care about doing a good job. It is a concept that places flexibility, change and continuous improvement at the heart of what it means to be an employee and an employer in a twenty-first century workplace.                                                        (Professor Katie Truss)

An engaged employee is aware of the business context, and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organisation. The organisation must work to develop and nurture engagement, which requires a two-way relationship between employee and employer.”

Considering the criticality of the engagement concept in an organisation, a model for engagement that helps in keeping a constant check on the levels of engagement and how it can be improved would be of great help in keeping the employees happy at work.

The Deming Cycle was created as a tool of continual improvement in manufacturing and quality control, but it is  is a useful foundation for employee engagement because fundamentally, creating corporate culture is a process of construction and continual improvement.

A corporate culture that engages is one that is always listening, continually improving, and never satisfied—many of the same traits needed for success in using the Deming Cycle, or Kaizen or Six Sigma.Models serve one purpose, to simplify challenges and focus actions, and the Deming Cycle does this very well.

DEMING CYCLE

 

Plan: What is our desired end state?

The most successful strategies are almost never established from high in ivory towers any more, but come about as the result of widespread engagement inside and outside an organization.

As part of this process, it is critical to think of your employees as a talent and opinion pool. As the famous saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” so job number one is making sure that your strategy is seen as authentic within the culture of your organization.

Authenticity is critical in both strategy and how it is manifested within organisations day to day. For example, do the organisational leaders “walk the talk”. Leaders are only leading when followers can see them. Planning and developing strategy are also the most critical step for employee engagement.

As our leaders look across the operating environment and context for disruptive changes, opportunity, and performance gaps, they can create a strategic vision for the value employees really add to the company, its clients and the community—one that usually goes far beyond traditional definitions of employee value creation. These visions should be lofty, but once again, they need to resonate with staff and need to be consistent with the policies and practices of day-to-day life within the company. Most importantly, the culture that is created needs not only to be consistent, but one that employees value being part of.

Questions to consider:

1. Where is the company right now in terms of engaging your staff?
2. What goal or goals can be created to connect business, community, and individual value?
3. People want to work for a successful, high-performing organization on projects that help them grow and in ways that connect them to something larger than themselves. Does your plan envision that?
4. Take a simple test and ask yourself: If you were forced to cut salaries for a short period of time or forgo bonuses for a year, would your employees be supportive? Are they invested?

Do: Execution

Do: Pull the right levers Doing—implementation or execution— is the responsibility of managers who translate the leaders’ why and what into how, who, and when. The trick is to execute the plan in such a way that the varied pieces connect to form a holistic execution to avoid inconsistency and competing components. For example, do your incentive programs support the change you desire to make? Do the structures, policies and other enabling elements of your organization help or hinder your ability to make the changes you seek?

This is the stuff of authenticity, where the daily actions of how business is conducted  connects employees to the company’s mission. If there is consistency, it creates a harmony where individuals see shared value in the work that is being done, beyond simply earning compensation, and want to be part of the work. The better and more aligned this value is, the better the results for employees as well as for companies.

An understanding of your company culture is critical to this step. A good place to start is to ask; if the company were a person, how would you describe him or her? The possible answers could range from collaborative, competitive, passionate, or complacent or defensive when asked to improve, or arrogant in a delusion that he or is she infallible? From there, identify ways to capitalize on that current state and think about what attributes you might want to change or disrupt. The point here is to determine a dominant set of traits upon which to focus, exploit and/or improve.

Questions to consider:

1. What are ways to start engagement before your staff even join your organization?
2. To what extent do you offer work that engages staff’s hearts and minds?
3. To what extent is your internal structure promoting or inhibiting your success in meeting your goals?
4. How well are the work processes supporting your plans to succeed?
5. Often forgotten is the “who are we” question, which examines the entirety of your company. How happy are we with who we are? What parts of our culture do we want to keep; what parts do we want to change?

Check: Conduct an honest assessment of your performance and what enables or impedes progress

Leaders can’t be certain that their successors will share the same view about the value of employee engagement; therefore, in order to make their programs sustainable, a forward-thinking leader has to work to deeply ingrain these programs. One way to do so is to embed the measurement of employee engagement into the company’s measurement process. Simply put, you “manage what you measure.

Perhaps most important, employees want to understand the impact they are making and the success of which they are a part. Telling the story about how each individual matters and the collective force of the program is a key component of any successful program that inspires the passions of its people. This step is not about only measuring, it is about communicating. Although leaders and managers are (rightly) hesitant to overload employees with communication, successful communication efforts are broad-based, with leaders using everything from performance evaluations to quarterly meetings to internal newsletters to consistently remind, discuss, and inspire the transformation at hand. It is a cliché, because it is so true— repeat, repeat, repeat.

Perhaps most important, employees want to understand the impact they are making and the success of which they are a part. Telling the story about how each individual matters and the collective force of the program is a key component of any successful program that inspires the passions of its people. This step is not about only measuring, it is about communicating. Although leaders and managers are (rightly) hesitant to overload employees with communication, successful communication efforts are broad-based, with leaders using everything from performance evaluations to quarterly meetings to internal newsletters to consistently remind, discuss, and inspire the transformation at hand. It is a cliché, because it is so true— repeat, repeat, repeat.

Questions to consider:

1. What KPIs can you create that connect business, community and individual value?
2. How can you connect metrics within your company’s human resources and annual review process to the goals laid out in the plan stage?   How congruent are they with the culture, process, and structure?
3. How flexible can those metrics be made in order to allow staff to create their adventure and tell their story of success and impact?
4. If performance is not what was hoped for, what is the root cause?
5. How are you communicating your goals, progress, and performance? Can your staff hear you? Can leaders in the firm that might be closer to your staff—in terms of both proximity and relationships— repeat that message?
6. What means might be used to “speak” to staff? Social media? Dashboards? Info graphics?

 Act: Work to move from business mission to individual significance

Continually improving performance and scaling change is the final step of the process and the first step in going through the process again and again. Over time, the cycle rate becomes shorter, iteration a more natural part of the process and improvement speeds up.

This is akin to getting the train to move, where it takes tremendous effort to get momentum started but the mass of change quickly starts to overcome any internal inertia. There are dozens of examples in which a company change effort seemed to take forever, followed by what seemed like overnight adoption of the change. During the long nights of building momentum, it is crucial to keep one’s eye on the goals, measure and celebrate small wins, and continue to paint the vision of the end state alongside the current reality.

Bringing your business strategy in line with your employees’ passions is a win-win. Getting employees personally connected to the business success comes from connectivity, consistency, and continual improvement. By harnessing well-worn models of continual improvement— models that are likely already at work in your company—and creating a strategy that is connective, collaborative, innovative, and draws out the best in your staff, you will earn even more than you invested. In return for these efforts, your business will create a differentiated approach to employee engagement that builds lasting value for your business and, in the case of corporate responsibility change efforts, will achieve the proverbial “doing well by doing good.”

Source of the Deming Model – pwc employee engagement February 2014

– Ms. Dyuti Dixit

To know more, please contact at dyuti@namanhr.com