People are motivated by different things – not everyone is motivated by money or power
Wiring enables us to understand the subtle aspects of motivation, and meet an employee’s needs from that standpoint. AcuMax provides a “mini-management guide” on every person in the organization — motivators, communication style and engagement in decision making! It is very helpful to understand which job candidates or employees are motivated by money and power and which ones are not.
Motivate According to Wiring
Job motivation matters! Without it, employees lack drive and energy. Without motivation, employees become robotic, and focused only on getting through the day. Needless to say, unmotivated people present a negative image to customers, vendors, the public, and other employees. Employees who lack motivation, no matter what type of job they have, are less productive, harder to train, and have little job satisfaction.
However, all employees are motivated by something, and often we don’t know what it is. What we do know is this – many employees are not motivated by things that matter to their employers. Some relatively productive employees are happy just to show up for work, quietly do their jobs, and leave exactly on time. Incentives or perks don’t change the behaviors of this type of worker. Other employees are highly motivated by their job. They are the “eager beavers” and look for ways to excel in their jobs. Still other employees seem de-motivated by their jobs, and grind their way through the day until “quitting time.”
The Motivation Mystery
The difficulty with motivation is that we seldom know what motivates an employee until after they are hired, and sometimes we never know what motivates employees. Since we are in the dark about a new hire’s level of job motivation, most employers assume all people are motivated by money, job security, prestige, or some combination of all three. As a result, most employers base their motivational efforts and incentives around those three external motivators.
To a certain extent this is a reasonable approach, but there is a powerful internal dimension to motivation that is naturally built into each employee. The internal aspects of motivation are more about job satisfaction than they are about money, security, or prestige. When someone feels job satisfaction, they usually perform well, have a positive attitude, and stay in their job for years.
The question all employers ask themselves is – “how can I motivate my people to reach higher levels of performance?” Before you ask that question, you need to answer this question – “what motivates my employees?”
Job Fit Means Higher Performance – and, Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a combination of many things, but at its core, job satisfaction means that an employee is a good fit for his or her job. It also means the employee has the correct wiring for that particular job. Wiring goes beyond having the right skills, attitude, experience or personality; it means the person has a natural and built-in preference for that type of work.
A family owned business that has been in business for over 40 years was having difficulty matching the right person with the right job. The hiring manager would have very good interviews with candidates for processing or closing positions, and then make a selection only to find out the newly hired employee was not detailed oriented enough for that role. They had this same type of bad experience trying to hire salespeople.
The company’s Executive Vice President looked at several options, and finally found the AcuMax Index® which solved their problem. AcuMax helped them find out how people were wired before making a hiring decision. Now they offer positions only to people who match the job profile, giving them the best opportunity to be successful. Since starting with AcuMax the company has better productivity, higher morale, happier people and improved customer service.
Matching an employee who is wired for a job means that employee will be naturally motivated to perform their job. It means when an employer provides an incentive aimed at increasing performance (e.g. bonuses, more responsibility, promotions, etc.) that individual will seize the opportunity and cheerfully exercise their job skills as they pursue the goal. On the other hand, employees who are not wired for the job often see incentives as thinly veiled attempts by their employer to squeeze more work out of them. These employees are actually de-motivated by incentives.
Lowering Turnover
To eliminate unwanted turnover, the best approach is to match the employee to the job. That is accomplished by matching the employee’s wiring profile to the job profile. Matching every employee in your organization to their job will take time, but a good place to start is with new hires or employees that are eligible for promotion. In both cases the employees’ wiring can be profiled and the optimal wiring profiles for each job identified. Once this information is known, the process of matching people to jobs can begin.
AcuMax Index®
AcuMax Index is the high employee turnover solution. AcuMax is the only pre-employment assessment that reveals a candidate’s natural wiring. After you hire an individual, you will find out how their natural wiring impacts their motivation. Wouldn’t it be better to know how a candidate is wired before putting him or her on the payroll? It can be done!
To get started, try the AcuMax Index for yourself by taking the AcuMax Survey for free. It’s all online, fast and fun.
Learn more about how the AcuMax Index can help your organization understand what makes your top performers so good – and how to replicate them! Contact Us or call us today at 844-228-6291.