Send to KindleThis is the final installment in a series on motivating your workers.
“These experts who say that pay is not a motivator don’t know what they’re talking about. If you don’t pay people enough, they will not be motivated to work hard. In fact they may be motivated to leave.”
There are many leaders in the world who believe pay and benefits are all that’s needed to motivate workers to work harder and produce more. Let’s look at that argument.
Humans have what Abraham Maslow called a survival need. To meet that need, they must receive sufficient compensation to provide food and shelter for them and their families. If they aren’t paid enough to meet this need, then the statement above will probably be correct. It will be difficult for them to realize any other motivation than to meet their survival needs. So, if you’re paying your employees a pittance, don’t expect them to move much beyond their motivation to survive.
But, consider this carefully. Once the employee is receiving enough to survive, (the definition of survival will vary from one person to the next) further pay and benefits just prevent dissatisfaction. This is a difficult concept to grasp so we’ll come back to it shortly.
For now, let’s look at what real motivators are. Fredrick Herzberg’s extensive studies on the subject of motivation revealed that real motivation does not involve material and external forces acting on the worker. Rather, workers were motivated by such things as recognition for their contributions and abilities, a feeling of achievement, and a chance to grow and develop. Many independent studies through the years support Herzberg. But aren’t those still external forces acting on the worker? It’s better to think of them as enablers. When a leader provides these things, they are encouraging, or enabling the workers internal motivation to be activated.
Let’s go back to the idea of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A worker who is dissatisfied is less likely to activate their own motivators. Removing the cause of dissatisfaction will not make the worker satisfied, merely less dissatisfied. But, when the worker is less dissatisfied, he or she will be much more receptive to those enablers that help them exercise their own motivation. Only then can they really be satisfied.
Confused? Look at it like this. You can pay your workers as much as you want and give them all the benefits they could ever desire. In doing so, you will have removed dissatisfaction stemming from that one area. They may appear happy, but if that is the only thing you do as a leader, and you don’t help them activate their internal motivators, they will not be as effective as you would like. When you enable those internal motivators, you will see a big difference in their effectiveness and productivity.
What do you think? Please leave a comment. I’d really like to hear from you.
