The Truth About Employee Engagement: What Actually Motivates Teams? was originally published on Ivy Exec.
We’ve heard it a thousand times: employee engagement, involvement, motivation. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of guides and videos on the internet about how to keep your teams engaged, but hardly anyone ever discusses the hard truth about employee engagement, what motivates them, and what doesn’t.
According to a 2024 research from Gallup, the most common themes for employees leaving their jobs are engagement and culture, at a stunning 37%. Well-being and work-life balance are second at 31%.
As the modern workforce gains more autonomy in choosing their employer and desired work arrangements, employers should become more proactive in addressing organizational problems related to engagement and culture that can cause even the most hardworking and star teams to resign.
Factors That Actually Motivate Team Members
In his book The Truth About Employee Engagement, Patrick Lencioni discusses the three root causes of job misery that impact employee engagement: irrelevance, measurement, and anonymity.
Lencioni describes irrelevance as the lack of purpose, measurement as the lack of measurement of an employee’s success and failure, and anonymity as the lack of identity, recognition, and value in the workplace. The presence of any one of these three can easily demotivate employees, driving down employee engagement and resulting in frequent turnover.
Taking these three important job misery factors, we can identify five critical factors that can impact an employee’s workplace engagement, performance, and productivity:
✔ Leadership
The math is simple: When employees are motivated and engaged, they are more effective and perform better, directly impacting organizational cost and productivity. Organizations should not forget the importance of effective and modern leadership in helping employees become more engaged and productive. It is not solely the responsibility of your employees; it is also yours.
So, what role do leaders and managers play in employee engagement?
- Good leaders serve as anchors and role models among employees. When organizational leaders are charismatic, transformational, inclusive, and value-driven, employees tend to emulate these same principles in their work performance to support driven leaders.
- Good leaders create a culture of support. Organizations that prioritize providing this support, whether through competitive work packages or growth opportunities, will likely see better employee engagement than those that do not. Organizations that make their employees feel supported and valued will perform better and motivate them to give back to the company.
- Good leaders invest. They acknowledge that for a business to succeed, it must invest in people, technologies, and activities that improve the lives of its employees in the workplace. These include effective payroll systems and contract management software that make it easier for employees to check their pay structure, roles, and job descriptions, as well as regular and well-structured workplace well-being programs.
Organizational leaders must remember that their workplace plans and programs lay the foundation for employees’ engagement and performance. Without managers and executives leading these structures, employees will remain stagnant and underperforming.
✔ Growth Opportunities
According to the 2024 Work in America survey, nearly a quarter of Americans are unsatisfied with their growth and development opportunities. In addition, a study by the Pew Research Center in 2022 showed that the lack of advancement opportunities is one of the top reasons Americans quit their jobs.
One of the primary reasons employees become easily demotivated at work – and eventually separating – is stagnancy.
Career or work stagnation occurs when employees feel their employers do not provide them with enough avenues or opportunities for growth or professional development in their current roles. This often happens when an employee has stayed too long in a role, doing the same thing every day, without opportunities for training, career growth, or internal movement.
To increase employee motivation and engagement in the workplace through growth opportunities, employers should:
- Provide employees with professional development programs, seminars, skills development, or training to support their personal and professional growth: By applying their learned skills to their daily work, employees will continually feel a sense of purpose and become more confident in their abilities.
- Offer career advancement to internal employees instead of hiring externally: Many employers fill vacated positions with external hires before considering internal employees’ qualifications, which can easily demotivate them.
- Align employee skills: Skill mismatches will easily demotivate employees because they won’t be able to use their skills for promotion opportunities. Employers should provide training, development, or reassess roles to create a detailed review plan to realign employees so they can be more productive and motivated.
✔ Recognition
After all, no matter where you are on the corporate ladder, who doesn’t like to be recognized?
Recognition creates a sense of satisfaction and purpose in an individual, mainly when their work is celebrated for its impact on the community. In a corporate setting, employee recognition is critical in motivating team members, and it costs little or nothing to start recognizing your employees’ efforts.
Employee recognition need not be difficult, complicated, or expensive. According to data from Gallup, the most effective recognitions are honest, authentic, and individualized – ones that show your employees that you value them for what they have contributed to the company, not just by sending one big send-to-all thank-you email.
You can show appreciation or recognition to well-performing employees by giving them monetary bonuses, acknowledging them during awards or recognition programs, giving employee spotlights on company catalogs or newsletters, or giving out personalized tokens of appreciation with custom t-shirts or other custom work items.
✔ Work Environment And Company Culture
Who you work with and where you work are just as important as who you work for, especially regarding work productivity and engagement.
Employees in a positive and systemic work environment are more productive and efficient, allowing them to achieve more work-life balance than employees in an unsystematic and disorganized workplace. Employers or team managers who make a distinct effort to provide a positive work environment, develop a good company culture, and show support will motivate employees to finish their tasks.
Conversely, an organization that allows toxic mindsets, behaviors, and working conditions to thrive will likely disengage employees from performing to the best of their abilities, whether due to lack of focus, inflexible work situations, personal issues, or stressful working conditions.
- To motivate and engage teams, employers need to focus on the following matters when it comes to overall working conditions and culture:
- Implementing open communication initiatives to encourage feedback
- Implementing diversity and inclusivity initiatives
- Maintaining a clean, organized, and well-maintained workspace
- Prioritize employee well-being programs that help employees focus and be productive at work
- Reevaluate and work on company values and culture – and embody them.
Happier and healthier employees can inevitably impact business ROI and profit. For example, introducing debt relief programs and other financial wellness initiatives can help address employees’ financial burdens, allowing them to be more focused and contribute more actively to overall business goals.
✔ Meaningful Work
Whether you’re at an entry-level or C-suite executive position, we’ve all asked this question at least once: What am I doing this work for?
Humans consistently search for meaning in their lives – whether it be why we live how we live or do the work we do. Meaningfulness at work is more personal and individual, driven by an individual’s desire to search for meaning and purpose for the very job they’re getting paid for.
In this manner, employers need to be aware that modern employees don’t just chase accolades, promotions, or salary raises but also how their work impacts the organization or the community around them.
So, how does meaningful work actually motivate teams and improve employee engagement?
- Minimizes the impact of stress: No work is not stressful, but meaningful work makes all the stress worth it. Employees who do meaningful work remain motivated and engaged despite their challenges. While stress and burnout cannot be eradicated, doing meaningful work won’t make them persist – and seeing the results of such meaningful work can easily take all the distress away.
- Strong sense of self-worth: Employees who find their work meaningful are likely to develop a strong sense of self-worth whenever they finish a task or see the result of a project they work on. This sense of self-worth propels employees to perform better and achieve similar results.
- Autonomy and control over work: As long as employees get the job done efficiently and effectively, allowing them a degree of independence and control over how they finish their tasks will give them a great sense of meaning in their work. When employees are given autonomy and control, it means employers trust them to get work done in a manner that’s more effective for them rather than forcing them to do it in a very particular way that’s unproductive and doesn’t yield good results.
Conclusion
Employers play a crucial role in ensuring that employees are engaged, productive, and motivated, and you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on employee engagement initiatives.
By having good leaders, offering growth opportunities, offering work recognition, fostering a good working environment, and allowing employees to find meaning in their work – the reality of what motivates teams starts with the organization’s desire to make its employees a priority and acknowledging that they are primary drivers of business success rather than just another organizational tool.
