[00:00:00] **Andrew:** Hi, I am Andrew. Welcome to the Work Unravelled podcast. In each episode, we break down a piece of the workplace puzzle, providing practical insights, fresh perspectives, and actionable solutions to help you navigate the ever-changing world of work. 

[00:00:15] **Scott:** And I'm Scott, whether you are a leader, a professional, or simply curious about what makes organizations tick, this show offers strategies to think smarter, work better, and lead boldly join us as we turn workplace complexity into clarity.

One episode at a time.

Imagine if bonuses disappear tomorrow. How would you keep your team motivated? Now, I never actually received bonuses in my employment, but the point is we think that money is the ultimate driver for people quite often. But what if it's not? What if the real secrets to elsewhere beyond the paycheck? Andrew research shows that money isn't enough. In your experience, why do you think that is?

[00:01:00] **Andrew:** Yeah, it's a common misconception. I did wonder, was it, was it a sore point? They didn't pay bonuses. Were you, were you jealous of organizations that Yeah, I worked. I worked, oh yeah. Great pensions. That's what they always say, isn't it? Low, low salary, but great pension. Um. Uh, my brother-in-law years ago, he was in sales and he would get huge bonuses and they would like go in holidays and they'd buy loads of stuff with their bonus.

He used to make a lot of money on, on bonuses. Um, so yeah, bonuses is one of those things that people, people use as a way to motivate people and it's a common misconception. So I, I'll work with clients and the manager will often say, ah, I, these people are only coming to work for the money. Uh, they're only here for the money and the way to motivate them to make them work harder, to make them work longer hours or work over the weekend is to pay them.

Now, let's be realistic. Pay is really important. It's really part of that broader mix of having an effective organization. So we're not saying in, certainly in this episode that pay and salary aren't important. Of course they are. Of course they are. People go to work. To earn a living. However, and this is what I think you touched upon, the research suggests over and over and over again, pay is only a tiny part of the motivation mix for your employees.

And if you want to be an effective manager, if you want to be an effective leader, there are various levers of motivation that you can pull on. Pay is one of them. But there were lots of other leavers, motivation leavers that you can use to encourage people to bring their, if you like, best to work. And what we're talking about here is that pay is an external motivator.

So I'm coming to work to get money and be paid a bonus for achieving a certain goal. That's fine. But that's what we call external motivators or um, motivators that aren't really within me. What you want to tap into, and this is again, the psychology of it, is what's known as intrinsic motivators. Uh, intrinsic motivation, what comes from within the person and what the evidence from psychology suggests.

That is the majority of our motivation. We're motivated from within, more than we are motivated from without. Um, so we are gonna talk through lots of different ideas and techniques that you can use as a manager. And again, I wanna stress in addition to salary, and we should start off with, if you're not paying people enough, you're not, you're not paying them the national living wage or the national minimum wage at least, or you're paying way below the market rate.

They're going to be demotivated and they're gonna be demotivated because they can't pay the credit card, they can't have a decent life, they can't go on holiday. So let's just sort of put that to one side. So we're assuming that you are paying your staff. The reasonable amount that they should expect. So if you look at things like in terms of motivation, recognition.

So if your employees and Gallup have done some, um, uh, research on this, if your employees feel recognized, they feel seen as in your recognizing their contribution. Gallup, the Gallup, uh, organization have found that engagement doubles. People feel so much more engaged with their job if they see, they feel seen.

Unfortunately, the same research says that, um, something like 60%, and I think it's actually worse than this, of employees do not feel motivated at work. They don't feel engaged at work, and they don't go the extra mile. So this, this area of motivation and motivation science is really, really. Crucial for you to have an effective organization and achieve your goal.

So handing it back to you, Scott, then from a sort of productivity perspective, what happens to productivity when managers only rely on money, then you think if they only rely on that sort of extrinsic reward system.

[00:05:06] **Scott:** The question I would ask is, would you rather be paid a ton of money to do a job you hate or a good enough amount of money to do a job that you love?

[00:05:14] **Andrew:** Yes.

[00:05:15] **Scott:** as you're saying, it's tied into those, those motivation factors as well. If, if, we've touched on, it's, I think it's quite a broad spectrum of things that can affect it.

So is your leader good? Are you coached in,

[00:05:28] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:05:29] **Scott:** episode, are you. Clear your direction of travel. You know, have you been given, uh, a strategic direction? Do you know what the goals are for you as an individual and your team? you, as you said, recognized for your worker? Are you rewarded by, not necessarily financially, but recognition for actually you went the extra mile there or we. The work you did had a massive achievement in terms of improving customer satisfaction. All of those things will motivate people internally, and actually if they're not seeing that and not getting that, then their productivity and their engagement is going to drop

[00:06:04] **Andrew:** Yes.

[00:06:05] **Scott:** amount of money thrown at them will fix that. As you said, there's, I, I forget what the, the amount is in my head. It's around. 70,000 a year and beyond that, the, the extra money doesn't

[00:06:19] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:06:19] **Scott:** difference to people's lives. It's, you have to enjoy your job. The money will only go so far.

[00:06:27] **Andrew:** Do you know that studies about lottery winners, so, so people imagine that once they were.

[00:06:32] **Scott:** of it.

[00:06:32] **Andrew:** Yeah. So it it, so people imagine that if they win the lottery and their, their money problems are all, all gone, they'll be happy. And what the evidence suggests is that people go back to their sort of baseline happiness.

So they might, you know, earning a, a average salary and I'd like to try this, I'd love to have this experience, but they then win a million pounds on the lottery or something. And then the first year or so, they just, as you can imagine, they just have, they're so happy. They can leave work, they can start traveling, they can get the yacht, whatever it is, within about a year, they're back to their average level of happiness.

So yeah, money, money is important to people, but only to a point.

[00:07:13] **Scott:** Yeah, and it is linked into that sense of purpose, isn't it,

[00:07:15] **Andrew:** Mm.

[00:07:16] **Scott:** before. So. As we said, people tie their job largely into their sense of purpose. You know, we said before, what do you do? Well, you answer with your job first. So if you have a job that is unsatisfying, that doesn't give you a direction, and those millionaires who quit their jobs, I've got loads of money, but I've kind of got no sense of purpose anymore because, um, you know, because only so many holidays you can have

[00:07:39] **Andrew:** Well again.

[00:07:40] **Scott:** to feel unworthy, like, well, what's my purpose in this world?

[00:07:44] **Andrew:** Well, it's, it's interesting you say that. 'cause of course there's people who get made redundant and we've talked, we've talked about, you know, career, um, threat of being made redundant and, and, and the risk of, of, of your career, of ending. But people who are redundant, they suffer depression because they've lost that sense of purpose.

They clearly, there's a money element to that as well, unless they've been given a lot of redundancy money. And then the other one is people who retire. And like people, I can't wait to retire. Retirement's actually quite bad for you because certainly for men, men particularly, they often die within a couple of years of retirement

[00:08:16] **Scott:** Yeah, I've

[00:08:17] **Andrew:** they lose that sense of purpose.

And, uh, hopefully you've got a good income. You've, you, you've got a good pension or pension, so you hopefully got enough money when you retire. But people do let lose that sense of purpose. So again, it goes back to this idea that money isn't everything. It's about that sense of purpose. Who am I? You know, what, what value do I bring to the world, isn't it?

[00:08:36] **Scott:** Yeah, so as you said, I think it's important for organizations and leaders within those two. Give employees that recognition,

[00:08:43] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:08:44] **Scott:** are in the right job that they enjoy and that

[00:08:47] **Andrew:** of course.

[00:08:47] **Scott:** and they're doing all the stuff that we've talked about in other episodes, actually make sure that you do call it out. Give the employees recognition that you are noticing what they're doing. very specific with praise that you give. Make that praise, not necessarily one-to-one. Do it in front of other team members on

[00:09:04] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:09:05] **Scott:** and say, I want to, you know, call out three of you today. I've done a really good job on this because. Good and fair Recognition and fair is important because you don't wanna have favorites and you wanna make sure that everybody feels they're recognized at some point in time and oh, they're always just praising everybody else. But my work isn't recognized so it can backfire, fair recognition. Can make employees more than up to four times more likely to be engaged with

[00:09:30] **Andrew:** Yes.

[00:09:31] **Scott:** and with the organization and on a wider level that boosts the culture.

People feel connected to the organization and all those kind of good things that we've talked about before

[00:09:40] **Andrew:** , Often managers are telling you what you've done wrong, aren't they? They're often telling you what you've failed

[00:09:44] **Scott:** do that.

[00:09:45] **Andrew:** or they don't. Praise is literally lacking in many organizations. It's either you're just doing your job so I don't need to praise you, or I'm here to catch you out.

So I suppose I'd ask any listeners, if you are leading a team, when's the last time you sent and gave some genuine praise? Especially the research suggests if it's unexpected. So I know you're talking about regular praise. If somebody wasn't expecting some praise, that's even more powerful.

[00:10:08] **Scott:** One of my bosses quite some time ago now, but they actually took the time to write a letter, or it was a

[00:10:16] **Andrew:** Yeah. Really?

[00:10:17] **Scott:** but it was on head of paper and it

[00:10:19] **Andrew:** Oh my goodness.

[00:10:19] **Scott:** and it was sent through the internal post. It just, you know, could have sent an email, but they

[00:10:23] **Andrew:** Yeah. Wow.

[00:10:25] **Scott:** put it in a letter and say, you did a really good job on this project. That just, I've still got that somewhere.

[00:10:31] **Andrew:** really

[00:10:32] **Scott:** box of like, things to

[00:10:33] **Andrew:** mementos.

[00:10:35] **Scott:** and it's just a, a subtle change

[00:10:36] **Andrew:** Yes.

[00:10:37] **Scott:** have just sent me an email, great job, but actually just taking the time to do that. Those kind of things go a long way

[00:10:42] **Andrew:** He made the effort.

[00:10:43] **Scott:** remember that to this day.

[00:10:44] **Andrew:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had an impact on you clearly.

[00:10:46] **Scott:** So Andrew, how do you think recognition works from a psychological angle?

[00:10:51] **Andrew:** Well, when we get recognized and we feel seen, we feel as though we belong, we feel as though we are valued. And you think from our sort of ancestral past, our evolutionary past. The worst thing for a human being is to be ostracized. You know, if you think about our hunter-gatherer past our ancestors, you didn't survive if you weren't part of a group.

And if you were excluded from the group, that was death essentially. And that, in fact, we talk about being ostracized. We talk about, um, we used to say the expression sent to Coventry. I dunno if anybody remembers that, that phrase, it's this idea of being pushed outside of the group. So recognition. Where people say, I see you, I value you.

Drives that sense of self-worth, if you like. Now, we've gotta be careful here because you can develop your own personal self-worth, but all of us as human beings, we're balancing that individuality about me as an individual and where I sit in the group. Do I belong here? Am I valued here? Am I appreciated here?

So recognition from your manager especially, who is this really important person in, in, obviously in your job, if he or she gives you some recognition and it feels genuine and it feels authentic, and it's out of the blue, they write you a letter on letterhead. No paper. I mean, wow, that feels good. And it feels good because it, it releases hormones within us.

Uh, dopa. You get like a dopamine hit, you get an oxytocin. Release of oxytocin and people have heard of, of dopamine very often these days, although people misunderstand what dopamine actually is. But oxytocin is the, is the sort of love, um, hormone. It makes us feel warm and fuzzy, you know, that sort of, uh, feeling between partners and children.

Parents and children. So we get a release of dopamine, we get a release of oxytocin. It, it feels good. And oxytocin especially has been seen to be really important for building trust. Now, my favorite phrase on this podcast, you can, you can, you know what I'm gonna say is psychological safety. So if people feel as though you're recognizing them, you're valuing them, they start to trust you, and they start to trust people that they work with as well.

So it just improves. Everything. It really does. I think the other thing to to point out in terms of motivation and not just using money, is if people are using their strengths. So what can happen is if somebody's in a job, and you mentioned this before, if they're in the right job for them, they're doing the right type of work for them.

So one person's very creative and they should be. Working on creative projects and somebody's very sort of analytical likes, numbers, likes working in Excel spreadsheets. If they're, if they're using their strengths, that also boosts their motivation and their engagement. Of course, people can be in the wrong job.

So as a manager, as a leader, you also want to try and develop their core strengths, and that's another way to motivate people without, without using money. Um, and I, I've seen this, you know, I've, I've seen, um, particular projects where we've looked at people's. Skill sets and clearly people are doing the wrong type of work.

You know, they, they, they are working in spreadsheets when they should be working on branding designs and vice versa. So understanding the people that are around you, what motivates them and trying to give them some sort of control, you know, trying to increase autonomy and something that we've talked about a lot on this podcast is within the constraints of the job, allowing people to make choices.

You know, the order, and I, I mean, I could ask you some tips on this, but the order of tasks, they work and you, you're very keen on, um, prioritization of course of task, you know, which, what's the most important, but maybe they get to choose that task priority. Um, making sure that they're working on projects, which just stretch them a little.

You don't overwhelm people with something that they don't feel comfortable with. You don't overwhelm them with completely new projects without some sort of. Education and learning, but giving them something that they feel as though they're developing and they're growing and they're learning. That also can motivate people.

If all they ever do is the same old, same old, you know, what they were doing today looks like what they were doing yesterday. And if they went back a year in time, it would look exactly like they were doing something a year ago. They're gonna get bored. So always trying to think how can you get people's interest?

You know, novelty is really important to people. And finally, before I sort of hand it back to you, Scott, as well, I think that when you look at the statistics, I think there's some shocking statistic I read that's 86% of people would switch jobs, not, not just for the money. But to grow as a person. And that was from, uh, people insight and that is mind blowing.

A lot of people would say, you know, okay, all things being equal, if maybe I've got the same salary, ideally more, maybe even less, I would actually change jobs in order to grow as a person. And when you hear that as a manager, as a leader, that should destroy your idea that people are only here for the money.

They're also here for the growth. They're also here for the self-development, don't you think? 

[00:16:08] **Scott:** I've seen that firsthand where previously I led development teams and , we were in public sector at the time, and they could have very easily gone and significantly improved their salary going to different companies. And one of them, a couple of them did leave actually. They were tempted to do that, and both of them asked for their old job back within a

[00:16:28] **Andrew:** Oh really?

[00:16:29] **Scott:** because the way that we worked and that autonomy that they had was around. And the way, the best way I could sum up is I would present the problem to them, the customer problem, the customer need, and then over to you, how you achieve that, how you solve that. Because, and I would say, you are smarter than me. You know how to do this. I don't, I'll give you the problem, I'll give you the environment for success that you have the power to it the way you think best. And for them, for a number of them, that was very unusual. 'cause they were used to both. I'm just told how to do it.

[00:17:07] **Andrew:** Mm.

[00:17:08] **Scott:** But the fact that they could use their brains, they could problem solve, and we encourage the team members to actually work together in a big team solving the problems. Literally around one big screen. I'd have five people. How do we solve this? What's the best way to do this? What's your experience, what's yours?

And I wouldn't be involved in that. I would just take a step back and they would call me if they needed me for some guidance on the problem. But the how? Was their challenge and their reward,

[00:17:32] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:17:32] **Scott:** And that's incredibly motivating as we've been saying. And I found that firsthand.

So my job was to frame the outcome that we wanted to achieve, not the steps to get there. That was their job. And there are tools to visualize that and to track that. I, I feel like I should be plugging, getting some commission for plugging Trello, I seem to mention on most episodes, but task boards checking in, that leader that. Gives them the problem, but lets them solve it. I've seen that time and time again be so effective for motivating a team and getting results and that can spread. As I said, I had a, generally, I had a very happy team. We had some challenges. It wasn't the, it was certainly for them, was not about the pay. As I said, they could have got paid a lot more elsewhere, but they stuck around and it also, the work we were doing was incredibly rewarding.

Being public sector, we were solving problems for people in time of need, so.. A big advocate for this approach. It's not just about money and it ties a lot to what we talked about in the previous episode, which is taking more of that coaching style

[00:18:37] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:18:37] **Scott:** and, and that leadership approach. Okay.

[00:18:41] **Andrew:** Yeah, completely. And as I say, I think I would, I'd sort of wrap it up by saying that as a manager and a leader, these are not robots. These are not your minions. They're human beings. They have motivations that are varied and mixed. Each person will be different. You need to understand each person individually, but it isn't just about the money.

And to bookend what we said, of course, people come to work to earn a living. Of course they do. And as long as they're getting what they need to have a reasonable life and each person's perspective on that is different. You know what I would think is a good salary? You, you might not think and vice versa.

But once people have have achieved that sort of what they think is reasonable. They're looking for growth. They're looking for autonomy. They're looking for mastery. They're looking for a sense of purpose. And if you as a manager understand that you'll get much more out of the people around you, they will be happier and so will you.

You'll be less stressed and you'll be more successful as a leader as well. So it makes a huge amount of sense to, to understand motivation, theory, and, and treat people with, with that sort of respect that, that you would want yourself.

Thank you for listening to the Work Unravelled podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next one. If you'd like Andrew or me to help you or your business, whether it is for team productivity, leadership, coaching, or communication skills, our website addresses are in the show notes.

[00:20:03] **Scott:** Thanks, and until the next time.