What Makes People Engaged and Satisfied at Work: Understanding Key Motivation Factors

The common belief that people work solely because they need the money to pay their bills is misguided. While financial compensation is a factor, it doesn't guarantee satisfaction or engagement at work. This post aims to debunk that misconception by exploring what truly drives workplace engagement and satisfaction, which are closely tied to motivation.

I became interested in this topic when I took the role of engineering manager at Adaptive and realized that in order to help people in their professional development and career progression, I needed to learn what motivates them. Throughout my life, curiosity (and sometimes necessity) has driven me to learn diverse skills, from biochemistry and molecular biology to programming and project management, but is it the same for everyone else? I enrolled in online courses [2] and read books [3,4] and psychology research articles to understand the subject better.

In this blog post, I will explore the relationship between workplace engagement and motivation. I will provide global statistics on employee engagement and delve into psychology research on human motivation and job satisfaction to better understand what makes employees engaged at work. I will end with some practical tips on how engagement levels and satisfaction could be improved at work.

Gallup publishes every year the State of the Global Workplace report [1]. This report is based on polls in almost every country, where a representative sample of the working force ins that country is asked several questions and classified into three categories based on their level of engagement:

In its 2023 report, an average of 60% of the world’s employees are not engaged, 23% are engaged, and 17% are actively disengaged.

Even though the percentage of engaged employees has increased from 12% to 23% since 2009, it feels wrong having 60% of the global workforce just “filling a seat” and, even worse, having another 17% pulling the cart in the other direction.

When I first saw the raw figures of the report (Table 1), I was surprised at the record high percentage of not engaged workers in Europe. It is worth noting that, as the logic used to classify the answers in these groups is proprietary and undisclosed, there might be a bias in the way these answers are used to classify a worker in these three engagement levels; it is not clear how cultural differences amongst respondents are factored in. For instance, if an American (USA), Japanese, and European worker all score the same on each question, would they all be classified into the same group? In my opinion, they should not because the answers to these questions are, in some cases, dependent on the specific culture of the location (i.e., a “strongly disagree” answer to the question “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day” might not be a good indicator of low work engagement in some work cultures).

In any case, even if the percentage of not engaged workers might not be comparable amongst different cultures/regions, it is surprisingly high.

The report also shows that 43% of the engaged employees actively seek a new job, whereas on average (considering all three groups) 51%. That percentage rises to 61% for the actively disengaged group.

Surprisingly, 43% of the engaged employees actively seek a new job. They find their work meaningful and feel connected to the team and their organization, so why are they actively seeking a new job?

On the other hand, it is not a surprise that employees who are not engaged are more actively seeking a new job; nobody wants to be bored doing something they don’t care about, many hours every week. Is there anything that could be done to improve their level of engagement in the “actively engaged” group?

The report offers some insights into the answers to the question, “What would you change about your workplace to make it better?” 85% of the responses are related to engagement or culture, pay and benefits, or well-being.

These answers relate to topics involved in motivation, like autonomy (“work from home more,” “longer breaks to eat without rushing”), competence (“learn more,” “clearer goals”), relatedness (“more approachable managers,” “place to relax or to get together with colleagues”), fairness/respect (“wish respected me more,” “pay on time,” “increase my salary because I work hard but the pay is not enough,” “less overtime”). But given resources are limited, which, among these changes, would most improve the level of engagement of employees?

In their article “Value hierarchies across cultures: taking a similarities perspective” [5], S. H. Schwarts and A. Bardi [5] explain how people rank a set of 10 values (power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security) on a numerical scale from -1 (“not important”) to +7 (“of supreme importance”), where 0 was tagged as “not important.”

Across 56 countries, the same top three values were ranked as the most important:

1. Benevolence (preservation and enhancement of the welfare of people with whom one is in frequent personal contact),
2. Self-direction (independent thought and action choosing)
3. Universalism (understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and nature).

These three were not only the top-ranked values in representative samples of the population of different countries but also the top-ranked within the subpopulations of primary school teachers and college students, indicating that this ranking is consistent across different population segments.

Everywhere, people value positive relationships with others (relatedness) and some degree of independence (autonomy) over other values, and it is not surprising that in Gallup’s report, many of the answers to the question “What would you change about your workplace to make it better” are related to these three top-ranked values. With this perspective on what values people rank as most important, we can delve into the actual research on human motivation to better understand how to improve the level of engagement of employees.

Internal and external motivators and the pillars of intrinsic motivation

Human motivation has been thoroughly researched for a long time. Abraham Maslow published a research article in 1943 titled “A theory of human motivation” [8]. He described a hierarchy of needs in which only the fulfillment of the previous one surfaced the next level of needs:

The drivers of motivation can be classified into external and internal motivators, depending on who originates them.

Research shows that applying extrinsic motivators to an intrinsically motivating task, at least in some cases, can dispel the intrinsic motivation [6]. How meaningful a task is perceived also affects intrinsic motivation; for instance, participants in an experimental setting were less willing to participate if the task was designed to be perceived as meaningless (mounting LEGO sets that were immediately disassembled after completion, finding pairs of letters in sheets filled with random characters when the results were ignored, or even shredded without assessing) compared to settings where the results were acknowledged/verified [7]. So, even though intrinsic motivators cannot be directly affected, there are external factors that influence them.

Research conducted in the past 20 years [2,3,4] shows that three pillars support intrinsic motivation:

At this point, it is worth noting that these three pillars are needed but not enough for someone to be engaged at work. They need energy (physical, mental and emotional). Imagine two workers performing the same role with the same level of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, but one has been two months in a row barely sleeping (any parents around who relate?) or going through difficult times in her personal life. It is not difficult to guess which one is more likely to be engaged. Abraham Maslow hinted at this by putting physiological needs at the base of his hierarchy of needs. Reasonable working hours and flexible remote/office schemes are some of the things that might help people in this sense.

Also, when it comes to competence, having the skills and knowledge required for the task is not enough. The person should also feel confident that they can do it. In this sense, providing frequent feedback and recognizing achievements might help improve confidence.

These hygiene factors are the reason why employees quit their jobs.

 

Conclusions and recommendations

Coming back to the open questions, we can now attempt to answer them:

Even though they are motivated and engaged, they are likely looking to improve one or more hygiene factors (company policy and administration, relationship with supervisor, peers and subordinates, salary) that make them feel “extremely dissatisfied” at work. I remember several cases throughout my life where a colleague or friend changed to another job to improve their salary, or the security of the job itself, or to escape an abusive supervisor. Two of our core values at Adaptive are respect and collaboration: we listen to what others value, find common ground, and work together toward our goals.

Increasing employee autonomy (one of Adaptive’s core values) over as many aspects of their work as possible. Making sure they have, or can learn, the skills and knowledge (competence level) required to perform their tasks and fostering relationships of employees with their colleagues. Other Adaptive values are innovation and excellence; we keep improving our skills and behaviors.

Changes that increase the responsibility/autonomy granted to employees (“giving everyone a fair chance of being promoted,” “they should grant more autonomy in work to stimulate everyone’s creativity”), recognition (“for everyone to get recognized for their contributions”), advancement/growth (“I would like to learn more things”) are more frequently associated with satisfaction at work.

As a concluding remark, it is evident that addressing the underlying factors that drive dissatisfaction among engaged employees is important to prevent turnover, whereas empowering employees with autonomy, fostering skill development, and nurturing collaborative relationships are pivotal in enhancing engagement levels.