Igniting the Workforce: How Motivation Drives Engagement and Commitment

Is your team thriving or merely surviving? Discover how intrinsic motivation can transform your workplace engagement and commitment. Join Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor, as he explores what truly drives success in business. 🚀 #Motivation #EmployeeEngagement 

Transcript

Ed Drozda: 0:10

Welcome to the Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Draws to the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've all. Always wanted. Welcome back to the water trough. This is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor. I'm concerned that employee engagement and commitment, as well as the related motivation is suffering a considerable blow these days. I think that the rise of self-preservation, survival as it were, is making it difficult for people to become fully engaged with and committed to their employment. This is not obviously everyone, but I do think a significant number of people are falling into this space. Employee engagement and commitment is vital both for the individual employee and for the company itself. So I'd like to revisit these concepts that I had talked about in an earlier episode. As a reminder, employee engagement pertains to an employee's enjoyment and enthusiasm about their own job, the task that they perform within the organization, whereas employee commitment is their enthusiasm, you might say their loyalty to the company itself. The idea of an engaged employee is something that we could find in any sort of a situation, and it's somewhat unrelated to commitment. For example, I could really like what I'm doing, that is the job that I'm doing, but at the same time, I may not like where I am doing it. I'm really not at home, I'm not comfortable working for this particular employer or boss or whatever. On the flip side, a committed employee, that is, one who's enthusiastic about the company, the boss, et cetera likely got there, because they're enthusiastic about the job they're doing as well. Let's move on to motivation. There is a strong relationship between motivation, engagement, and commitment. Motivation is basically that which moves us to act in the desire to reach a goal. It's a driving force behind human behavior and it fuels competition, it sparks social connections. In other words motivation is one of the things that gets us outta bed in the morning. It gets us started in our day. It's crucial in being able to set and attain our goals, our objectives. Without motivation, we'd all be relatively stagnant and not accomplishing much. In the studies of motivation we've identified two distinct forms. These are extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. You might think of extrinsic motivation as things such as rates of pay, promotions, time off, benefits. These are things that are external to the recipient, and employees desire, such things, in fact these are the things that motivate us to take a position or to stay in one in the first place. But extrinsic motivation is somewhat limited in its capacity to inspire us to act, to try to achieve goals. Extrinsic motivation is important for basic elemental needs, but it's the intrinsic motivation that we really need to focus on as employers. Intrinsic motivation, as the name implies, is from within. What inspires us from within? What kind of drive do we personally have? Intrinsic motivation is not something that can be given to us. It is something that has to emanate from us, and herein lies the relationship between motivation, engagement, and commitment. One thing we have to consider as employers is that we cannot forcibly motivate anyone. If I were to give someone a raise, needless to say in the instant moment, they're gonna be pleased to have gotten that raise. But that raise itself does not motivate the individual beyond the expectation or the satisfaction of having more money. An employer's actions, those external to an employee are important but ultimately, sustainable motivation is something that emanates from the individual, from the employee in this case. So then let's look at the idea of motivation and its relationship to engagement and commitment. I like to look at motivation as the fire in the belly, the things that get you going, the things that inspire you to move to act. Each of us has motivation in one form or another. I like to think of engagement and commitment as manifestations of that motivation. So one who is motivated may desire first of all, to be valued, and to be seen as someone who has a lot to offer. So the engaged employee, the one who is excited about their job, is motivated to do a good job. They are driven to perform well, typically for reasons that are personal to them. They desire to be effective. They desire to be seen as people of value. They want to meet the goals they've set for themselves as well as those set for them. And all of these things are fed by their motivation to achieve. The committed employee is one who has a loyalty to their company, and perhaps even more importantly to their boss. They appreciate where they work and for whom they work. This may have stemmed from the fact that they liked their job and typically, those who are committed do like their jobs. The committed employee is one who would go to bat for the company; they achieve and produce at a rate that would ensure to the best of their ability, the success of the company. So then we can see that motivation precedes employee engagement and employee commitment. The employee must first be motivated. They must have that drive, that fire in their belly, that desire to achieve, to be a value to serve. And once this is in place we see the potential for engagement and commitment to evolve. So, what does this mean for employers? What can we do to capitalize upon this motivation? Well, we can start by seeking to hire people that demonstrate an inherent motivation, through their previous work efforts, the way that they present themselves in the interview process. We can see the sorts of potential, the likelihood that a person is going to be motivated. As far as developing engagement we have the ability to bring people into positions that suit them well. As employers we have to be very careful about who we assign to what job. For example, the employee who is accustomed to having interaction, frequent interaction and oversight is not going to be particularly excited about working in a position where autonomy is the rule. It is not going to inspire them. They will not be engaged because quite frankly, they'll have a difficult time being able to find their value in the job that they're performing. An employee working for a company that has little interest in the employees. Is not going to be committed. When we seek a position one of the first things we look for is evidence that there is going to be support provided by the company we're working for. Inherently we want to like our job, our boss, and the place in which we're working. That is the essence of engagement and commitment. The employer is responsible for creating an environment in which employees can value their presence, the place in which employees can feel that they have value, that the company has appreciation for their contributions. These are the situations where commitment will thrive. As far as engagement is concerned, again this is the responsibility of the employer to carefully and thoughtfully match the employee with the job. It's not getting warm bodies in the door to perform for us. That is not going to lead to engagement. The lack of engagement and the lack of commitment will in fact lead to a reduction in productivity, a reduction in satisfaction, and ultimately it will have a deleterious effect on business growth and sustainability. So let's recap. Motivation is something that can be fed externally, extrinsic motivation. But intrinsic motivation is the most critical element for us to identify in our prospective employees as well as in our current employees. We should be seeking people who are going to have that fire in their belly. People who are going to be inspired to work hard, to work effectively. Because these are the people that are going to bring us the greatest amount of success in our business efforts. The second thing is in order to have engaged employees we have to be able to provide jobs that are a good fit for them. We don't want to waste good talent by giving them jobs that are beneath them, that they simply don't understand. Jobs that they are destined to fail at, because they're not aligned with the employee. And as far as employee commitment, we have to create an environment in which employees will feel welcomed, they'll feel valued. We have to make it clear to them that our success as a business is dependent upon their success as productive and happy employees. This is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor. Until next time, I want to wish you a healthy business.