Using the Carrot to Motivate while Paying Peanuts

By James Adonis

There's a new trend sweeping the business world. It's called 'budget trimming', or if you're a little risque, 'budget butchering'. This is when you tantalise your bottom line by dropping your excess baggage. Slowly and seductively, or if you're in a rush, urgently and fervently, you strip a line item off here and an unnecessary outlay there, all in the name of cost-cutting.

Managers and business owners who enthusiastically followed this panic-driven craze have now found themselves in the precarious position of having employees to satisfy without the means to do so. Like a sugar-daddy that's run out of money, employers are scrambling to find low-cost or no-cost ways to get their employees to want them bad.

Thankfully a handful of academics came to the rescue... back in the 1970s. Researchers at the University of Rochester pioneered 'intrinsic motivation', which is the ability to get employees to do stuff without paying them. They identified the following seven non-monetary factors that get employees to forget they're living in a material world.

CHALLENGES: Employees in the workforce today are more highly educated than at any point in history, which means it's not long before they're as bored as a bus driver at a Tupperware party. The solution is to stimulate them with tasks that are new, activities that are tough, problems that are complex, and responsibilities that are risky.

CURIOSITY: If curiosity killed the cat, why are there still so many of these jumpy and dumpy creatures running around? As we enter adulthood, sadly our enthusiasm wanes and our cynicism gains traction. Arouse curiosity by incorporating your employees' talents and passions into their work. Curiosity didn't kill the cat. It kissed it alive.

CONTROL: This isn't about employees seeking power like a revved up Kim Wrong-ill, but it is about employees desiring more influence over what happens at work. Let your team make decisions, allow them to initiate change, and provide staff with additional responsibilities. When they've got greater control, ownership is maximised.

FANTASY: The corporatisation of work is a plague where people start to talk the same, think the same, and go insane, as they blend into a blurry field of groupthink. Instead, use games and imagination to engender learning. Give employees the freedom to be creative in their jobs so that their interest is peaked, not picked to shreds.

COMPETITION: By nature, we're a competitive species. It's not about keeping up with the Joneses, but outdoing them. You can even see it in yoga classes where people would rather dislocate their shoulder than let someone else go further in a pose. Running performance-related contests at work inspires people in a similar way. They love to win.

COOPERATION: Strong relationships can withstand the quicksand of a boring job. People want to belong. Even bikie gangs are just lonely, bearded, leather-wearing men desperately seeking solace in a group. The key is to get your employees to interact with each other in meaningful ways, such as collaboratively working on projects and tasks.

RECOGNITION: Out of everything on the list, this one is by far the easiest - and yet it's avoided like a sneezing Mexican. A Gallup study found that 69% of employees prefer to receive praise from their manager rather than monetary incentives. The simplest of thankyous with the sincerest of attitudes is enough to make your team feel valued.

I used to believe the old bumper-sticker maxim of, "Anyone who says money can't buy you happiness doesn't know where to shop." But really, that was just the money-loving ambition-addiction side of me. The factors that genuinely determine whether employees adore their jobs or hate them cost nothing more than a little effort.

To download complimentary e-books on employee engagement, retention, and recruitment (valued at over $100), please click here.