by Ana Lucia Jardim Evans
"At the start of another transformational period in American business, Andy Grove of Intel said that there are 2 kinds of businesses: those that use email and those that will. Today, flexibility is the new email. There are employers that have it, and there are those that will".
With these words, the head of the United States Office of Personnel Management underpinned the spirit of the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility hosted by President Obama and the First Lady on March 31. Going farther, he announced the US government hired the founders of ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) to implement work flexibility programs.
Speaking at the Forum, President Obama - introduced as the "Teleworker in Chief" - further acknowledged the results of a White House study estimating that flexibility arrangements could save the US economy a combined $15 billion a year.
But workplace flexibility is just one practice that organizations can adopt to tap into employees' intrinsic motivation- our true Drive according to Daniel Pink's latest book, which inspired the BOLD workshop of June 23rd on Beyond Pay-For-Performance: Leveraging Intrinsic Motivation for Exceptional Performance.
Pink cites a collection of research data demonstrating how extrinsic rewards (what organizations typically use to drive and reward performance) will actually lead to poorer performance. He then shows that what motivates people and leads them to perform at their highest level is intrinsic motivation, fueled by Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.
Pink is not alone. In a 2009 survey by McKinsey (1), 3 intrinsic motivators—praise from management, leadership attention, and opportunity to lead projects—were found to be "no less or even more effective motivators than the 3 highest-rated financial incentives: cash bonuses, increased base pay, and stock or stock options".
Why then are we not using intrinsic motivators more in our organizations? McKinsey ventures that most managers are not comfortable in challenging the status quo, or investing the additional time needed to leverage employees' intrinsic motivation. The time challenge also came up during our conversation with Judy Parkman, a BOLD member. Judy has been an HR Business Partner working with executive teams at HP for the past 17 years, and she performed her Industrial-Organizational Psychology graduate work on the topic of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation in different organizational roles. Judy found that certain occupations such as scientific research and HR responded more to intrinsic motivators, whereas others such as sales responded more to extrinsic motivators. When asked how she reconciled her findings with Pink's Drive, Judy remarked: "It is not accurate to say that someone in sales is not intrinsically motivated. What I found is that every occupation has a different optimal balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The message for organizations is: we need to invest the time understanding our employee population well, and then customize the workplace to tap into what drives each employee. This is the next frontier, what Judy called the "personalized medicine" of performance management.
But how scalable is this approach? Judy clarifies: "It's not about creating a different set of benefits and work arrangements for each individual employee- that would not be manageable or scalable. What organizations can do is offer a diverse menu of options- from flexible working hours, job-sharing, discretionary time, etc- that reflects the preferences of its employee population, and then let employees and management select what best works for their particular situation". The McKinsey survey showed that managers can also contribute with other practices such as one-on-one meetings with employees (they make people feel valued, while large-scale events, such as the town hall meetings were one of the least effective non-cash motivators).
We wrote in a previous BOLD article about the decline in employee motivation in the current economic climate. With little cash to spare, investing the time to tap into intrinsic motivation could very well be the key to long-term success of organizations.
To dive deeper in to this topic, we recommend:
- Drive, by Daniel Pink, published by The Penguin Group, in 2009.
- Motivating people: Getting beyond money, November 2009, Mickinsey Quarterly (available to members only. Free registration at mckinseyquarterly.com)
- Worklife balance and the economics of workplace flexibility, White House Forum for Workplace Flexibility, March 31, 2010.
- The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want, by David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer, published by Warton School Publishing in 2005.
(1) “Economic Conditions Snapshot, June 2009: McKinsey Global Survey Results,” survey of 1,047 executives, managers, and employees around the world by McKsinsey available at mckinseyquarterly.com. Premium membership required to access.
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