Send to KindleOne Time When Money Can Be a Motivator
I constantly tell people that money is not a motivator. Multiple studies have shown that to be true. Money can change behavior and can appear to motivate people but it doesn’t really help them meet their own needs.
With one exception.
In his Hierarchy of Needs, Dr. Abraham Maslow identified five needs that he felt explained internal motivation throughout the population. His first level of need was survival. He said that humans had a need to stay alive and propagate the species. Simple enough right? Maybe not.
In the earliest days of humans on the planet our survival needs were pretty simple. That’s no longer true and there is often more perception than reality in what people feel are survival needs. This is a crucial point to understand as a leader. What you think your workers need to survive may be different than what they think they need.
Here’s the clincher, and how money and motivation come together. If you’re not paying your employees enough to meet their survival needs, no matter what they may perceive those needs to be, you are not helping them meet that need. In fact, you are impeding their efforts to meet that basic need and they will not be motivated as strongly, if at all, to meet any other need. In other words they aren’t going to be engaged, or even dedicated to what they’re supposed to be doing on the job. They may be splitting their time between multiple jobs, or just searching for a job that pays better.
That’s why I caution about hiring a lot of low paid, part time workers. Yes, it would seem to be more economical and advantageous, but what if you had fewer workers who were more productive because they were motivated by higher level needs rather than a need to find the next meal for their kids?
