Name: Video: Seeking Fulfillment from Work
Uploaded: 2016-02-09T00:03:22.836Z
Duration: 9 min 15 s

So what do people look for when they work?

In the previous module, the emphasis was on basic needs.

Money, in particular, as a source of income.

This is the main example of what are known as extrinsic motivators or

extrinsic rewards.

These are rewards that are external to the individual.

Again, classic example, pay for working.

In this video, we focus on the main contrasts,

main foil with extrinsic motivation.

That is intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation results from a desire to achieve rewards that are internal to

the individual.

That is psychological needs, psychological rewards.

And again, I wanna emphasize that internal in this context means

internal to the worker, internal to the individual.

Not internal to the organization or to the team.

I label pursuit of these psychological rewards as fulfillment.

A lot of people are looking for fulfillment from their work, so

intrinsic motivation can be a powerful motivator in the workplace.

So to think about how to provide intrinsic motivation to workers,

we need to think about basic psychological needs.

There's a lot of different theories about psychological well-being and needs.

I'm going to use self-determination theory in this video.

Self-determination theory emphasizes

three basic psychological needs as a foundation for psychological well-being.

There's competence, which is a sense of mastery,

being able to do something successfully, being able to do something well.

There's autonomy, which is being able to do something using your own judgement,

using your own independence, using your own discretion, so you can structure

tasks, prioritize tasks, the way that you think is best and fits with your style.

And then finally, relatedness, which is a sense of social belonging,

human interaction, feeling closeness with others.

And so self-determination theory posits that

these three psychological needs are the foundation of intrinsic motivation.

If you can design tasks that allow for workers to have a sense of mastery,

a sense of autonomy and discretion, and to do it in a way that they feel that they're

belonging to a social group, then this will provide intrinsic motivation,

which means they will do it in pursuit of these internal psychological rewards.

You don't need to provide financial incentives to have somebody pursue tasks

that fulfill these internal psychological rewards.

Okay, but as a manager, how do you know when employees are successfully

pursuing intrinsic motivation when your tasks are designed,

when jobs are designed as a foundation for intrinsic rewards?

Well, there's a variety of different measures to try to measure this.

But the most long standing is job satisfaction.

Simply, the extent to which somebody likes their job.

There's a tremendous amount of research on job satisfaction.

Maybe more research in some strains of I-O psychology on job satisfaction than

any other single topic.

However, it's probably largely seen today as a fairly superficial measure

of fulfillment in the workplace today.

So, what's taking its place.

Well, for a while, commitment has taken the place

of job satisfaction as a key measure of job and work attitudes.

There's a number of different measures of commitment.

The most popular is organizational commitment, which is the extent to

which somebody identifies with and feels attached and committed to their employer.

But even that is a little bit outdated these days and

the current measure that everybody talks about today is employee engagement.

This is seen as an even deeper psychological connection to one's work

than satisfaction or commitment.

So engagement will ask questions such as,

to what extent do employees feel invested in their job,

how devoted are they to their work, are they willing to go above and beyond.

So we can see this progression and emphasis from are employees happy,

to how attached are they, to how invested are they.

However, I wanna emphasize that I see this progression

more as from the perspective of what organizations are looking for

rather than what individuals are necessarily looking for.

And the dissatisfaction with job satisfaction as a measure

isn't necessarily rooted in problems with what employees are looking for but

what organizations are looking for.

In particular, you might think that happy employees are more productive, and

to a certain extent that's true,

but it's not as strong as managers in organizations would like.

Job satisfaction is a much better predictor of whether or not somebody's

gonna leave the organization, it's not as strong of a predictor of job performance.

So, people are looking for stronger measures, which is why they looked at

commitment and commitment is a slightly stronger predictor of job performance.

But still probably a better predictor of whether somebody's going to stay or

leave the organization.

And so, I think that's why engagement is such a popular measure these days,

because it's a stronger predictor of job performance than job satisfaction or

commitment.

So, how can managers facilitate fulfillment?

Work and people are complex, of course, so there are many factors.

But let's simplify things into three categories.

First, there is the nature of the work itself, the job.

For example, as demonstrated here in this video by people paving a road.

There's also co-workers.

You can see the pavers here working as a team and

then there's also the importance of managers.

So first, think about elements of the job itself.

Research comes back to four particular job characteristics as being particularly

important for job attitudes.

Skill variety, that is, can workers use a variety of different skills

in their tasks, and so, variety is better than just routine or the same old,

same old mundane task day after day?

Second, there's task identity.

Can employees identify with something whole rather than piece meal?

Do they feel part of delivering something,

rather than just a minor cog in a machine and they can't really see the end result?

Thirdly, is task significance.

So this is the degree to which a job contributes to a greater good,

something beyond the individual.

At the highest level, it might be,

do they feel like they're contributing towards a social good?

Although it doesn't have to be at that level.

It could be simply contributing to the well-being of a work team

rather than just their own individual goals.

The last job characteristic that's shown to be important

is one that we've already mentioned earlier in this video, autonomy.

All right, do people have freedom, independence,

discretion to be able to structure work tasks the way they see fit?

So, try to design jobs that promote these characteristics.

Now, admittedly, this can be tough when jobs are tough and

need certain things done is a certain way, for example, paving a road.

But you can still do things to promote task variety, significance, and

even autonomy, in terms of letting workers use their expertise and discretion.

So the nature of a job is important, but

so too is a feeling of belonging that comes from having co-workers.

So pay attention to interpersonal relationships in your work groups.

Not only relationships with you as a manager,

but the relationships that workers have among themselves.

And make sure that workers are supportive and trusting of each other and

not undermining each other, not distrustful.

They don't need to be friends but they need to be respectful of each other,

they need to be supportive, they need to be able to trust each other.

And then lastly, the importance of managers.

Managers are particularly important in the goal setting process.

Make sure you're providing clear goals that are appropriate,

not too easy, not too hard.

Difficult goals are better than easy, but not so difficult that it gets frustrating

and people don't have the skills to be able to complete them successfully.

And make sure you're providing rationale for goals that people are pursuing.

They need to understand why they're doing something so

that they can internalize it and really embrace it as a goal of their own.

A well-known HR acronym is provide smart goals.

S-M-A-R-T goals.

Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

That is the ability to complete them within a deadline, provide some milestones

for completion that are reasonable, and can keep workers on track.

Now, during the goal completion, goal pursuit rather than goal setting process,

it's important to provide feedback.

Make sure you provide specific, detailed, clear,

actionable information on someone's job performance and how they can improve.

So putting all of this together, if workers can pursue their work with

a sense of mastery, using discretion in a context that promotes social belonging,

then research shows that that will be the foundation of intrinsic motivation.

It will also allow workers to find job fulfillment in their work.

But remember, the specific features can be different for different employees.

Psychologists emphasize what they call individual differences.

People have differing levels of cognitive ability, differing dispositions,

they have varying personality traits, so

you need to understand individual strengths and weaknesses.

You need to understand individual goals and what each person is looking for

when they come to work every day.

Video: Seeking Fulfillment from Work

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