How can meet the needs of our customers or in this case our employees?
Companies always talk about how they want to motivate their employees, but rarely are they using behavior and psychology to do it.
"The role of motivation is often overlooked when designing and implementing technology in the workplace, even though technological changes can have a major impact on people’s motivation" - according to a paper I am looking at for a project by Gagne M, et al 2022
***Motivation is probably one of the most complicated things to get right***
Let me repeat that - Motivation is one of the most complicated things to get right - it is not driven by just telling someone to do it - which means we have to have the right techniques and strategies in place to enable and increase that intrinsic motivation from an intention to action.
So how can you do this?
Well, by understanding a theory of motivation and then creating the right motivation design techniques in practice.
One theory of motivation you could use is Self-determination Theory - which can tell us that employees need to have their basic psychological needs met
The needs
Autonomy
They need to feel in control of their behaviors and goals
Competence
They need to gain mastery of tasks and learn skills.
Relatedness
They need to experience a sense of belonging.
Examples
What hinders:
-->Controlling Leadership -->Excessive Workload -->Work-Life Conflict -->Abusive Supervision
What helps:
-->Job Autonomy -->Social Support -->Performance Feedback -->Skills Variety
If these needs are met it means you will have a higher chance of success when it comes to increasing employee well-being, and performance and have more positive outcomes for your organization.
Meeting Psychological needs is just good business.