Ever since I quit a "highly desirable" graduate scheme in management consultancy a year after joining, I’ve been curious about employee motivation. There I was with a great salary, great joining bonus, suited and booted, working with one of grandest names in the City as a client; according to all university careers literature, I had made it. But I was bored, frustrated and restless. I quit, spent a year in Argentina and Spain teaching English and learning Spanish and I’ve never looked back.
Now that I’m running my own business the question of motivation has returned, albeit at a slightly different angle. One of the real challenges of working with talented, skilled, in-demand people is the fact they could work anywhere and you have to find a way to get them and keep them working with you.
Money of course is important, but only up to a point. Looking specifically at Drupal in London, (the same applies to all other in demand technologies) the elephant in the room is that any permanent developer worth their salt could quit and earn £300+ per day contracting.
When you do the sums, take into account sick days, holidays, time between projects and IR35 you’re probably looking at an equivalent salary of around £45k - £55k. The average for permanent employee would be £30k - £40k .There are numerous reasons not to contract but in order to keep someone working with you, you need more than (threats) you need to provide compelling advantages of working in a permanent role.
The literature on employee motivation is vast and unless you are an HR manager or academic, largely unhelpful. No one running a business has the time to go through all of this. By far the best resource I have found, which provides a very simple and effective framework for thinking about motivation, is this video by the Dan Pink at the RSA.
He starts by showing the limitations of money as a motivator and then goes on to look at what truly motivates skilled knowledge workers. He identifies three aspects of work which can really impact on someone's motivations.
Autonomy. The freedom to decide and manage your own time and tasks. Dan comments that management is great for compliance, but if you want engagement you need to provide autonomy. Citing Google's 20% time policy, which spawned some of the best products, he claims that this approach quickly generates innovative products and concepts.
Mastery. The habit of spending hours practicing one song on the guitar, practising the same throw and pin over and over or working on canvas after canvas is of very little obvious benefit but of great importance. The pure joy of masteing something complex whether a programming language or a machine tool is a very powerful motivator. Providing the opportunity to master something provides a very compelling reason for turning up to work in the morning.
Purpose. Knowing that your work is contributing to something of benefit to others, regardless of whether that is as worthy as helping Romanian orphans or just creating a cutting edge web app, puts an individual’s efforts into context, this can provide motivation when the work veers into the mundane.
At C&W we’re trying to provide as much of the above triplet as we can and I can safely say it is one of the most difficult things I’ve attempted. It’s also one of the most rewarding. Knowing that we have created more than just a livelihood but we’re actually making our employee’s lives more enjoyable is immensely rewarding and in itself motivating.
