The principles of motivation in the workplace

Lack of motivation in the workplace costs American industry hundreds of billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and reduced sales. However, this is changing rapidly. In recent years, hundreds of companies have entrusted their top management with strategies to motivate their employees and find ways to increase staff loyalty and productivity. More and more of these executives have the word ‘motivation’ high on their list of priorities. 

The Occupy Wall Street movement and the famous TV series
Undercover Boss reflect underlying needs that are driving the emergence of a growing and more precise focus on motivation within companies. The world is calling for a more humane form of work that truly values people. Many Americans, and others, enjoy watching episodes of Undercover Boss that demonstrate how top management understands the importance and personal needs of employees. Apple suffered a heavy loss on Wall Street when it became clear that its new iPad would be built by hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers labouring in conditions that almost no American would tolerate. It subsequently changed its business practices.

For decades, it was easy to ignore the principles of motivation in the workplace because motivation itself was difficult to define and almost impossible to measure. But for a growing number of organisations, the question is no longer whether motivation is important, but rather how to achieve it and perform at their best. 

For organisations committed to employee engagement and the principles of workplace motivation—such as McDonald’s, the New York Stock Exchange, Whole Foods, The Container Store, Southwest Airlines, Stew Leonard’s and many others—it is more of a field test than an exact science, as books offer little guidance on how to proceed.

It is, however, easy to confuse leadership with engagement and motivation. Leadership, of course, is essential for engagement and motivation. It simply describes the personal skills required of people who manage others at any level to achieve results. The process of effectively motivating people within a company requires more than just good leadership and a general objective. It requires everyone in the company to be informed and to have a clear understanding of the company’s mission and how they can contribute to it and also benefit from it. It also requires equipping people with the skills or abilities to contribute and encouraging them to get involved, share and collaborate. It is about translating leadership into results through an appropriate framework of tools and tactics. It requires not only making promises, but also keeping them at every stage of the journey.