What is motivation?

Simply put, motivation is the reason for acting or behaving in a particular way. These reasons which may be external or internal can be leveraged to influence individuals to carry out assignments.

This explains how leaders, employers, and teachers can motivate their followers, employees, and learners respectively to act in a desired manner. That said, there’s a not-so-effective way motivation has been pursued in the past.

Employee motivation in the wrong direction

One of the earliest principles of motivation people know is the reward and pain concept. Individuals are motivated to act in a certain way to obtain an external benefit or avoid pain, hence the use of rewards and punishment.

This is exemplified by the “the carrot and the stick” concept where the carrot represents a reward the employee gets for obedience and the stick is punishment for disobedience. This is ineffective and scientific discoveries show us why.

In one study, people were asked to donate blood either freely for charity, or for about $7. The result? 37 percent opted to donate for reward while 52 percent chose to donate for free.

A scientific approach to employee motivation

Employees, just like the blood donors, are motivated by a lot more than carrot (reward) or stick (punishment). It is with this understanding that employee motivation is being rejigged.

Types of motivational behaviors

Behavioral researchers have discovered two major categories of motivation. One is intrinsic motivation which stems from within the individual and the other is extrinsic motivation which depends on external factors.

• Intrinsic motivation is based on fundamental, sometimes innate factors within an individual. These self-determined motivators could be a desire for autonomy, a sense of purpose, or an internal belief system.

• Extrinsic Motivation, on the other hand, comes from stimuli outside the individual. Rewards like monetary gains, recognition, and promotion fall under this category.

Employee motivation through only extrinsic factors has a fatal downside; it forces employees to do tasks against their inner convictions in order to gain external reward or avoid being penalized.

In his book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Daniel H. Pink explains that this can diminish intrinsic motivation, creativity, performance and encourage unethical behavior and short-term thinking.

You don’t want that for your eLearning programs.

Apply intrinsic employee motivation in eLearning

As an employer, always incorporate intrinsic motivation as part of your employee motivation strategies. To do this is to trigger the Self Determination Theory of Motivation which includes the desire for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Entrench intangibles like responsibility, excellence, and team spirit which trigger these internal motivators into your company culture.

For eLearning designers, you can build intrinsic motivation into your courses by doing the following:

• Preach commitment at the start of the course by making participants understand and commit to learning objectives.
• Structure the course content to highlight progress and consistency.
• Add prerequisites to rouse the thrill of challenge within the learner.
• Allow participants to interact within themselves and show off progress to other employees.

Wise employers know to use eLearning automation tools like Wizcabin to take care of the course design while they focus on the quality of their content.