How do you motivate your staff right now?  Here’s one way.

A great reminder of how to inspire your staff was highlighted in the recent Influence Report (a highly recommended read).  An organizational behavior researcher decided to test his theory that workers often fail to live up to their potential because they’ve lost track of the significance and meaningfulness of their own jobs.

As the report describes:

He figured that if he could remind employees of why their jobs are important, they might become more highly motivated, and therefore, more productive individuals.  To test this idea, he worked with a fundraising organization that allowed him to go to its call center and randomly assign employees into certain groups. Some of these employees read stories from other employees describing what they perceived were the personal benefits of the job, including financial benefits and the development of skills and knowledge (Personal Benefit condition). However, another set of employees read stories from the beneficiaries of the fundraising organization, who described how the scholarships they obtained from the organization had a positive impact on their lives (Task Significance condition). Finally, there was third group of employees that did not read any stories (Control condition). In addition, the employees were told not to talk about or share what they had read with any other callers. The researcher was able to obtain the number of pledges earned as well as the amount of donation money obtained by the callers both one week prior to the study and one month afterward.

The findings are an important reminder to us all:

Employees in the Personal Benefit and Control conditions looked almost exactly the same after the intervention as before it in terms of amount of donation money raised and the number of pledges earned. Yet, those in the Task Significance condition earned more than twice the number of weekly pledges (from an average of 9 to an average of 23) and more than twice the amount of weekly donation money (from an average of $1,288 to an average of $3,130). Additional analyses suggest that the huge increase was driven by previously unmotivated employees increasing the number of calls they made per hour.

If you want your staff passionate about your work, show them the good they do in the world.