We all sense that motivation at work is important. It feels intuitively right that high motivation brings benefits—to the organization and its people. And it also chimes with us that low motivation is problematic—again for us, and for where we work.
But considering its importance, most leaders struggle to define motivation, and are poorly equipped to have a nuanced understanding of where it comes from and what it actually means for employees and businesses. This, we feel, represents a sizable blind spot for leaders today.
At the start of 2024 we looked to address this issue by exploring the origins and characteristics of motivation in the workplace. We did this by undertaking a significant piece of research with over 2500 employees in large organizations across the UK and the US. The results are both revealing and counterintuitive and provide a powerful point of leverage for leaders to deliver significant improvements in organizational effectiveness.
The different forms of motivation
But while we speak of motivation being critical within organizations, we first need to recognize that not all motivation is the same. We need to distinguish between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. This distinction is crucial, because these different forms of motivation originate from different experiences, and lead to potentially very different outcomes for the business.
Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation describes our motivation to do something that comes from “within us”. At its most extreme, we know when we’re intrinsically motivated because we typically lose track of time and become completely absorbed in the task at hand. Within the workplace, we identify two specific forms of intrinsic motivation: enjoyment motivation and meaning motivation. The former comes from a sheer love of our work. The latter comes from recognizing the importance of our work (maybe in terms of its impact on others), even if we don’t actually enjoy the tasks themselves. A good example of someone who probably has high meaning motivation, is a teacher.
Extrinsic motivation
Extrinsic motivation, by comparison, describes our motivation to do something not because it comes from within us, but because we see the behavior as a means to an end. Within the workplace, extrinsic motivation can take three forms. Firstly, there’s what we term identity motivation. This describes our motivation to derive pride and self-esteem from what we do at work. Social motivation describes our motivation to work because it gives us recognition and status among our peers. Finally, financial motivation refers to our drive to undertake work for the financial gains it provides us.
The importance of motivation
It’s important for leadership to recognize these different forms of motivation, for the simple reason that if we want to increase motivation across the organization, we need to know which type of motivation is lacking and needs increasing. For example, if we see that employees have low social motivation, we can immediately recognize that addressing this issue requires a very different strategy than if enjoyment motivation were low. In this example, one way to improve social motivation would be to revamp employee recognition schemes, whereas enjoyment motivation could be improved by providing employees with more autonomy and opportunities to gain new skills.
So, what motivates us in 2024? Our data tell us that the strongest form of motivation is not enjoyment or financial motivation. Instead, it’s identity motivation—46% of employees score aspects of identity motivation as highly important. In other words, the single strongest driver to go to work, is the desire to bolster or protect our sense of self-esteem. This in itself is an interesting result, but it becomes even more interesting when we know that the weakest form of motivation is financial (only 28% of employees rate aspects of financial motivation as important). Put another way, we are driven to go to work more by our need to bolster self-esteem, than by our paycheck.
With this more nuanced and granular view of motivation in the workplace, we can also see that identity motivation is consistently important throughout our entire working lives, and that those at the start of their careers within large organizations record the lowest levels of intrinsic motivation to go to work.
Why money, status, pride and meaning are all important
The implications for leadership of this clearer understanding of motivation are—we hope—very clear. It reveals that motivation is both multifaceted and highly dynamic. What motivates a long-standing salesperson in marketing and sales, is likely very different than what motivates a graduate trainee in operations and logistics. Yet most organizations approach improving motivation with a blanket, one size-fits-all approach.
To build a highly motivated organization, leaders need to recognize and respect the intricacies of motivation. This in turn demands capturing motivation data and then using these data to inform tailored strategies to bolster specific forms of motivation across specific pockets of the organization.
All large organizations claim to be comfortable making data-led decisions yet few have demonstrated the ability and willingness to extend that approach to understanding and building motivation. This, we believe, is a chronic oversight, and one which leaders need to address with urgency.
Download the full report
To learn more about the importance of motivation in the workplace, fill in the form to download The Business of Motivation report:
