Managers strive to extract the best performance from their employees. It’s easy to understand why: Productive and efficient employees help increase profits and growth. However, many companies fail to understand the importance of employee motivation in this equation.

According to Gallup, only 2 in 10 employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work. And employees whose managers involve them in goal setting are 3.6 times more likely than other employees to be engaged.

Understanding motivational needs is key to success

In order to motivate employees, it’s critical to understand their psychological and emotional needs. Professor David McClelland described three types of motivational needs:

  • The Need for Affiliation (nAff)
    Our drive to form attachments, to be accepted by others, and to interact with them. nAff people are team players who need to be popular and liked.
  • The Need for Power (nPow)
    Our drive to control the way people behave, to influence their thinking, and to win status. The nPow person needs to lead, make an impact on the world increase status and prestige.
  • The Need for Achievement (nAch)
    Our drive to accomplish demanding tasks, reach high standards, and overcome obstacles. Achievement motivated people need lots of feedback and a strong sense of accomplishment.

Most people possess all three of these “need” characteristics but spend most of the time leaning more towards one than the others. Achievement-motivated individuals are those who tend to make things happen.

Enerjoy’s profiling method

Enerjoy, a smart sales achievement platform set up 3 years ago by an organizational consultant and HR expert, has developed 10 parameters based on Professor David McClelland’s Theory of Motivational Needs, Harvard’s Motivational Model, and Behavioral Economics workplace research.

The main parameters are as personal/group competitiveness, personal/group achievement, among critical others.

The Enerjoy Achievement Platform analyzes these ten behavioral parameters, builds a personalized cognitive profile and then provides an individualized incentivization plan with different types of challenges, all tailored according to each employee’s learnt motivational profile.

This creates a workplace ecosystem that enables employees to improve professionally, feel appreciated and get rewarded. So that with the right profiling, higher employee motivation increases productivity and reduces turnover rates — improving a company’s overall success. Because after all, what motivates me to want to succeed is not the same as what motivates you.

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