There is a workable scale of motivation, and believe it or not, money is not the highest incentive. Of course, pay is important, but a job engages the whole person—it is a big chunk of their day and their life. Unless they are fully engaged at work, you won’t be getting their maximum talent.
The scale of motivation from highest to lowest is as follows:
- Duty
- Personal Conviction
- Personal Gain
- Money
Money Motivation
Money-motivated employees are usually clock watchers; they leave at closing time on the dot (or earlier) even though you still have customers to serve. They take all their breaks and extend them beyond what is allowed if they think they can get away with it.
They don’t really care about the clients even if they say they do; they put themselves and their concerns first. Again, know them by their actions, not by what they state.
They’ll schedule appointments outside of the business and let you know about it at the last minute, giving you little choice but to let them go to their appointment. They also tend to pick inconvenient vacation times, insist upon them, and then your business suffers the consequences.
When they came to be hired, their questions and concerns mainly had to do with how much they were going to be paid, their health benefits, and other money considerations. They ask for raises quite often—sometimes every year—even though they do not do more for the raise they request, i.e., their production is not rising commensurate to the proposed pay hike. They think they should be paid just for showing up!
If you try to improve things or make them more accountable, they will rail against it as they do not want to be held responsible.
They usually “false report,” meaning they will lie about why they were late or why something was done or not done. They will even falsify their statistics if they have any.
Do not confuse “money motivation” with someone striving for deserved bonuses for higher levels of productivity. This is not money motivation, but a natural response to increased production demands.
The truly “only money-motivated” person is not employable. If you spot them in the initial interview, don’t hire them. If they already work for you, let them go once it is determined beyond reasonable doubt they will never be real productive employees.
Personal Gain
Personal gain is something your clients/customers want. It is what you provide for them. It is, of course, OK for people to want this. And, of course, staff should receive personal gain from working in your business. That is natural.
But an employee who is only looking for personal gain is poorly motivated. You are not in business to just provide this to your staff. You are there to provide a service to clients. If this is done in enough quantity and with enough quality, there is plenty of personal gain to be had by everyone involved.
To illustrate my point, have you ever had an applicant in the hiring interview ask you various questions about your employee benefits? Example: “What is your health insurance plan?” “Do you carry dental insurance or can I receive your services for free or at a discount?” “Do you have a retirement plan?” “How much vacation time do I get?” “Is it paid vacation?” When the applicant is more interested in what he or she can gain personally from you than the job, this employee is poorly motivated.
Hire such employees and you’ll regret it. This doesn’t mean everyone is only motivated by personal gain if they question you about these benefits. But it should not be their main intention when it comes to your business, i.e., their biggest interest. And you can perceive this. Have you ever had a salesman try to sell you something and you can tell he or she is only interested in your money or in making the sale? Well, it’s that same feeling. Don’t hire them.
If you are in a hiring interview and the applicant makes you feel uncomfortable or defensive about your pay scale or how good your benefits are, you are dealing with either a money-motivated person or a personal gain person. These are his or her main motivations for being hired.
Instead, applicants should be more interested in what they can do for you. Their interest should be in your business and whether they think they can be of benefit. If you have existing staff who are more concerned with getting better benefits than giving better service, you have a personal gain-motivated staff.
Personal Conviction
People at the personal conviction level love or at least like what they do. They like the field they are working in and are convinced they are doing something beneficial. They care about the customers and how the business is faring. They don’t have to be in a mystic daze about giving their service, but you can tell their true intention is to help the client and, thus, help the business.
They have a belief that help is possible and go about doing their job without considering money or personal gain as their main motivation. This is where you’ll find the bulk of your employable people. Companies run smoothly when they are full of people at the personal conviction level. In fact, they are fun to be in!
Duty Motivation
An example of someone motivated by duty would be the staff member who goes about doing his or her job without giving unnecessary responses to requests. You ask employees not motivated by duty to take out their trash and they responds with, “Why didn’t our cleaning service do it?” “Is that my job now?” Of course, it is the duty of every employee to keep his or her area clean and tidy so as to be presentable to the public and even other staff. A clean office demonstrates someone cares enough about how the office looks.
Another example would be where your phone is ringing off the hook and no one is there to answer it. A staff motivated by duty would not hesitate to answer the phone. They know they are there to take care of the customers and to assist the business even though it might not be in their specific job description to do so.
Look over your present staff and see if you have someone who fits this description, always going the extra mile to ensure all runs smoothly.
You would be very, very fortunate to have at least one employee motivated by duty.
We have many businesses where the practitioner and the office manager are in this category.
Duty-motivated staff would keep the business going despite heavy weather. They would be the pillars of the business. They would be willing to do their job and any task that helps the business. They also would be loyal and trustworthy. They are rare. Help them all you can when you have them. Train them. Do everything in your power to retain them.
If you don’t have such a staff, know such employees can be found. It takes the effort to go through many job applications to find one. If you think interviewing only two or three prospective personnel should yield you one duty-motivated employee, dream on. You might get lucky, but I’ve seen business owners go through more than 100 applications to find one. It is much more usual to find a person at the personal conviction level than it is at the duty level.
But don’t give up! They are out there in all ranges of age, experience, and intelligence. And the funny thing is, the more staff members you have motivated by duty or personal conviction, the more you’ll get. In personnel, it is true: Like attracts like. And it is true the more unwilling or non-employable staff members you have, the more you’ll attract the non-employable.
Kevin Wilson is chairman and CEO of Sterling Management, a dominant player in the practice management consulting field for more than three decades. Wilson is a trained administrator and consultant and published Human Resources book “Personnel: Your Most Valuable Resource or Greatest Burden.” All told, Sterling has delivered more than 500,000 hours of business consulting and achieved more than 135,000 training completions among 175,000 business professionals from 1,700 cities in every state in the nation. The company has won more than 75 local, national, and international awards including twice appearing on the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing, privately-held companies. For more information, visit http://www.Sterling.us.
