I am not surprised by the result of this study as well. I do trust that 48% of the motivation of an employee can get from excitement and challenge. When I first started working at the big pharma company I was placed in a group that did routine work every day, and I couldn't last more than 2 weeks in this department. when I was placed in the clinical testing department, it was far more exciting and challenging that made me want to work harder and try my best to improve my data. In my experience, I can confidently say I owed the motivation to the environment of the new department i was placed in
For the lecture this week, I was fascinated by the results of the study Dr. Simon referenced. The study asked employees why they stayed and worked at the company they are employed at. What motivates them kind of surprised me. I'll list the results here:
Exciting and Challenging Work: 48%
Career growth and development: 43%
Working with great people: 42%
Fair pay: 32%
Supportive Manager/Boss: 25%
Be Recognized/valued & respected: 23%
Benefits: 22%
Meaningful Work/Make a difference: 17%My personal motivation to work is to work with great people, make a difference, and have the work be exciting and challenging. Are you surprised by these results, or are they within your expectations? What motivates you to work?
No, I am not surprised by these result. The result align very much with my own motivation priorities.
My motivation for working at a company are
1. Exciting and Challenging work
2. Career growth and development
3. Meaningful work/Make a difference
3. Fair pay
4. Working with great people
I dont think there is any right or wrong here. Each person needs to just make career decisions which are consistent with their own values.
Personally, I think the result of the survey make sense.makes sense. I think the more interesting question to ask is why do people leave the job they are in? I am in a company right now where a lot of people are leaving. Why? One of the reasons is that as people leave they are not replacing them. This means more work gets put on the people who stay, causing them to leave. People also leave when they don't feel like there is opportunities to advance internally. A lot of time it is necessary to leave a job to get promoted and get a pay raise. We have also gone through a lot of change in our company as our division was recently sold. I think people get scared of big changes and try to find something new. In my field of work, people leave for all various reasons.
However, I am not surprised, but where i came from " third world country" money is the main reason why people go to work and stay. This study would have different result if it stated people ages and level of experiences, as each generation have different thought about life and work. For me having the 3 main category is my motivation.
Humanity cannot lives without working, the humanity needs a purpose to live for it and goals to work for achieve it, so life is work. There are two types of work, contracted work with payment and working voluntarily. people usually concentrate to work with payment for sure to provide basics thing for living for examples food, clothes and etc..., also, volunteering is important in people live especially in the family matter and in work as personal relationship.
Looking at the results of what motivates people to stay and continue working, I had mixed thoughts there were some things in places that I would guess and there were others that I thought were on par. For example, I didn't understand how meaningful work/making a difference was all the way at the bottom but exciting/challenging work was all the way at the top. I personally feel like those kind of go hand and hand but they were so far apart. Another thing was fair pay. In my experience, there are a lot of people that work solely because they need to get a check, yet fair pay was under things like "working with great people".That was strange to me. I may be wrong in thinking that more people are like that but that's what I've seen. For me, personally, the thing that motivates me to work the most is pay. As selfish as that sounds, at the end of the day, there are bills to pay, debts to get rid of and without that, the motivation to work constantly sort of dwindles down. I think working with great people and career development are also very high motivators for most people including myself but, honestly, at the top of my list is fair pay as bad as that sounds.
Whenever I think of the reasons as to why I work a 9 - 5 job, my top motivators are: exciting work at my company and having a supportive manager. I believe just these two motivators go hand-in-hand with career growth and development and meaningful work Being engaged and interested in my company's work is what allows me to get up everyday to work. I get to work with cardiovascular medical devices that aid in very complex heart surgeries. Working with such fascinating medical devices that actually save lives everyday, makes me feel like I am making an impact and difference in the world. Additionally, having a supportive boss that knows my value to the company and my career aspirations is one other motivator to stay at my company. When you have someone supporting you in the workplace you feel that your work is being recognized and you feel of value at the company. If it weren’t for these two reasons, I do not believe I would be able to stay at the company I am currently working for.
Personally, the results presented in this lecture were not surprising to me as I have heard similar remarks from coworkers. In addition, my greatest motivators are also the top two factors listed in the results. From my prior experiences, my productivity and motivation to actively accomplish tasks is the highest when I am working on a project that is not only exciting, but also challenging me at the same time. A prior example of this is when I was tasked with the development of a custom data collection system while working as a researcher that I would continue working on the project during my free time. The reason for this additional input was not that I had deadlines approaching soon, but rather that I enjoyed the work and finding solutions to the challenges presented. Furthermore, the opportunity to grow and advance in my career over time is also a major motivator for me as I believe it has a correlation with work being challenging. The reason for this is that I believe as you grow and advance in your career you will be presented with projects with new and unfamiliar challenges. On the contrary, if you were to remain working on similar projects then the level of challenge of the work presented to you would decrease over time.
Are you surprised by these results, or are they within your expectations? What motivates you to work?
I think a lot of it differs from company to company and person to person as we all tend to have different views and expectations. Based on my experiences, big pharma companies tend to use money as a motivator because they hire lot of people and can't focus on the differences every individual makes. So, they tend to increase the pay rates and kind of become fair with it. But personally, my motivation is on how challenging and interesting I find my task than money because as of now, I am working on building my experiences and I can make more money in the future while I have a lot more experiences and skillsets to offer.
The statistics that Dr. Josh has mentioned are pretty fair but again it can differ whether a company is big enough or private, how much money it is making in general and if the company is meeting its goals etc.
From my personal work experiences almost all of the positions I have held were for fair pay and career growth and development. But this is mostly because I want to become a doctor so none of my current work experiences have been close to what I want to work in, but have been helpful in getting me closer to the end goal.
Exciting and Challenging Work: 48%
Career growth and development: 43%
Working with great people: 42%
Fair pay: 32%
Supportive Manager/Boss: 25%
Be Recognized/valued & respected: 23%
Benefits: 22%
Meaningful Work/Make a difference: 17%
I'm not surprised by the statistics on this as it does come down to whether or not you like your job. The top three are all about the satisfaction one is able to find in their day and that is the most important thing to think about. The other reasons why people are motivated to stay are still person centered, but it becomes less immediate to one's growth. As an engineer in the medical device world, I would love to say that I always make a difference, but I wouldn't say I entirely do my job because of that satisfaction knowing someone is becoming better due to some influence I had on a product. Its more of a personal fun where engineering can be really exciting and interesting when you find the niche you are looking for and how to keep expanding your knowledge and collaborations with others. I will say that the supportive manager/boss, although lower on the totem pole in terms of motivators, is a lot more influential in a matrix organization than you would think. Although they have less power of influence over their whole group, my manager is someone who becomes a guide in my growth and career and becomes the most influential person of the top three reasons on staying motivated at work. I think these motivators can be in a gray area once you think about who influences your motivations in your career and can be quite different in the different types of organizations the company has.
Based on the survey, one overarching goal of mine has always been to help others. As cliché as it sounds, I have always wanted to do something meaningful that would have a direct, positive impact on patients. I think this mindset would allow someone to feel more satisfied in what they are doing. More than this, I would agree with the first two points as well. I enjoy challenging myself and I know that if I am not challenged, that I will become bored. Just as equally, I think it is important to have some idea of career growth when starting to work as well. If nothing else, it acts as motivation to advance within your career. I recently started a job which provided me with all the previously mentioned motivators from the survey. However, what made me want the position even more was something not on the list. What drew me into the company I work for now was the company culture, especially since it is a start-up. The company culture that was conveyed to me made me believe that I could stay and work with the company for the long-haul without many complaints.
When I first saw the results of the study I was little shocked however after thinking about it, it made sense. Majority of the employees that I have worked look forward to being challenged, as it directly implies that the the company thinks the employee is competent enough to take on the challenge. Additionally I have also encountered a very good chunk of people in it for the "rat race", how can I get above everyone else. I personally try to distant myself from those individuals as they have no shame in stepping on you if it means they will get the promotion. Rest of the percentages make sense as its very rare to find an individual who is in it to make a difference in the world, who actually wants to help the patient out be directly or indirectly. I personally do not fall into that category, however I am trying to nurture that mindset.
Personally I feel like it depends on the age group at which you're conducting the experiment with. I would say the younger crowd would lean towards career growth, fair pay, and benefits while the more experienced workers stay for a challenge and working with great people. My three motivations would most likely be career growth, fair pay, and meaningful work. I would love to make a difference but still gain experience and live a comfortable life.
The statistics provided aren’t surprising at all because people are working with the expectation of growing int their careers. Additionally in order to grow in their careers, they ned to work with people they like, enjoy their environment, and be able to personally connect with everyone around them to be successful or grow. The top reasoning of exiting and challenging work also does not surprise me simply because of the fact that challenges motivate people and work that is seen as “fun or exciting” drives people to stay at their company and continue to work. Nobody wants to be at a job where they dread coming in to do work they have no fulfillment in nor being in an environment that doesn’t make them feel great or makes them feel uncomfortable.
It also isn’t a surprise to see that meaningful work or making a difference was the least amount of motivation because a lot of the work we do is supposed to be meaningful already and provide some sort of advancement to society, hence it not really being at the top of reasonings to work.
I highly relate with the first component of what motivates people to work because there have been times I was in environments I wasn’t feeling the best nor like I could provide my best work along with being challenged. But when I was put into another working environment where I didn’t feel stagnant and like I was still learning something knew everyday, that motivated me to continue working and grow.
