Probably each of us can recall at least
one morning when we had to force ourselves to get up and go to work. Or
maybe compel ourselves to actually work. Motivation is a state which
often has to be created and maintained, and the incentives have to be
constantly revised. It happened that I had to deal with motivational
issues in two different situations: as an employee and as a coordinator
of an interest group.
In the first case, we are paid to do a certain job and most employers
consider a decent payment is more than enough to motivate personnel and
all the other issues pertaining to motivation have to be figured out
solely by the employees. In the second case, the interest group I work
with operates on a voluntary basis and motivation suddenly acquires a
different meaning. It has nothing to do with money, but still there are
thousands of highly skilled people who volunteer daily and their results
can often be higher than those paid for the same tasks.
So what actually drives us to work and perform better?
According to Daniel Pink, there is a significant mismatch between
business perspectives on motivation and social science findings. The
typical motivation scheme within companies and organizations is
rewarding top performers and in this way setting an example for the
rest. So the belief is that if employers reward a certain behavior, this
leads to a reinforcement of that particular behavior. Experiments show
that this is valid mainly for mechanical tasks and the higher the
payment, the better the work performance.
...
Probably each of us can recall at least
one morning when we had to force ourselves to get up and go to work. Or
maybe compel ourselves to actually work. Motivation is a state which
often has to be created and maintained, and the incentives have to be
constantly revised. It happened that I had to deal with motivational
issues in two different situations: as an employee and as a coordinator
of an interest group.
