Examples:
Meaning/purpose:
People who have a deep sense of meaning and purpose in their work often feel more energized and engaged, and are also more productive. You can encourage your people to find purpose in their work by writing a team mission and vision describing the benefits to people resulting from the team’s work.
Development/career advancement:
Assign tasks or projects that will give people new skills or develop existing ones, and give team members the opportunity to work on projects that test their skills. Allow them to lead new projects on a rotational basis and give (with proper risk management) everyone interested the opportunity to lead the group.
Good relationships:
Good relationships at work are important for happiness, engagement, and productivity. Help people build good relationships at work by planning team activities so that everyone can get to know each other better. For example, you can organize a day off or just meet after work. Give team members time before meetings to talk and connect. And you should also get involved in these discussions.
How to conduct the 5 motivators assessment exercise?
Gather your team
Your first step is to unite the team. Make sure a whiteboard or flipchart is available where you can write down ideas during the discussion. Explain the goals of the meeting: identifying the most important factors influencing job satisfaction and motivation in your team. Everyone should be encouraged to participate in the meeting and express their opinion. Make sure everyone understands that there are no right or wrong answers!
Ask for motivators
Next, go around the room and ask each person what things motivate them. These can be obvious motivating factors like money, promotion prospects, recognition, achievements, development, and good relationships, but can also include other things, like flexible working arrangements or the ability to bring dogs to work. Encourage your team members to come up with as many motivators as possible, including those they believe motivate people they know. This will give you the most complete list of motivating factors possible. After the team finishes, look at the ideas as a group and consolidate similar ideas so people don’t pick them repeatedly in the next stage of the exercise.
Clarify the suggestions
After simplifying the list, review each motivator and make sure everyone understands what it means or implies. For example, someone might have suggested flexible working conditions as a motivating factor. But what does this mean to others? One person might interpret this as the ability to work remotely, while another might see it as a way to start earlier and finish work later to avoid rush hour traffic.
Prioritize motivators
Ask each team member to independently review the list, choose their top five motivating factors, and rank them in order, where one is the least important and five is the most important. Then ask them to mark these scores against the motivating factor on the whiteboard or flipchart. When each person has publicly rated their motivators, tally the scores to reveal the top five according to the team.
