The benefits of intrinsic rewards in the workplace as a management style over extrinsic rewards.

1. Intrinsic
Rewards
in the Workplace

2. Motivational dynamics in a modern workplace have
changed drastically with new working
requirements, labor laws, and different worker
expectations. Recent research explains the most
important change has been the rise in the
importance and weight of emotional (or intrinsic)
rewards with the decline of of material (or extrinsic)
rewards. Where did the popularity of intrinsic
rewards come from, and how can these rewards be
used with your employees to build a welcoming,
high-engagement working environment?

3. In the last thirty years, outsourcing overseas and the
automation of a lot of the highly repetitive jobs, and
that coupled with a more competitive global market
that requires employees to use discretion and work
with autonomy to a much larger extent than ever
before. Over the same 30 years, the amount of U.S.
employees who say that their work is meaningful,
requires their judgement, and makes use of their
strengths in the workplace has more than doubled.
In short, there are far fewer worker bees and that
makes the workers feel much more empowered and
significant.

4. In addition, youth coming into the workforce now
have very different preconceptions of the work force
than the previous generation before them. Raised in
an era of phenomenal technological growth, and
instantaneous results, they work best within the
confines of meaningful work that utilizes their
cutting-edge skills and lets them find new ways of
accomplishing tasks and streamlining processes,
which again makes them feel more meaningful to
the operation.

5. Most of the motivational models still in place today
are leftover from earlier years, when both
employees and the work they did was different. The
level of importance toward intrinsic rewards cannot
be overlooked and should become more prevalent in
the workforce as we discover that our workers are
responding best to this.

6. Extrinsic rewards.

7. Extrinsic rewards are most often financial. They are
the tangible rewards given to employees by
managers and business owners. These can include
benefits, pay raises, and bonuses. They are external
to the work itself, and other people are the ones in
control of the amount of reward, the type of
reward, and whether or not they are handed out at
all. These came into being when the majority of a
workforce was routine, manual, and repetitive
labor.

8. This doesn’t mean that good pay and bonuses are no
longer relevant, in fact many employees will still
consider pay the the main factor in whether or not
they accept a job. And feeling underpaid for your
performance is one of the strongest workforce de-
motivators. However, if the pay is fair, the strongest
day to day motivation is found in intrinsic rewards.

9. Intrinsic rewards.

10. Intrinsic rewards are the psychological rewards that
employees get from doing meaningful work and completing
it well. More and more of the workforce nowadays is
expected to self-manage to a much more significant degree.
This is beneficial to you, the employer, in that your
employees can add great value by innovation, problem
solving, and adjusting strategy on their own to meet the
need of customer or business. This is also beneficial to the
employees, because this imparts and sense of
meaningfulness, something that really matters in the larger
scheme of the company.

11. It gives workers a strong sense of purpose and
direction. It also gives them a sense of choice, of
ownership of the work that they are doing. They are
responsible for the approach you are taking, and for
making that approach work. They achieve within the
standards of good work that they set for themselves,
which lends a sense of pride and accomplishment. It
also allows them to feel a sense of progress. That
their work is on the right track and building toward
something.

12. If employees do not feel the intrinsic rewards, they
are dissatisfied. They are not empowered in their
work. They start to feel like it is pointless, and this
makes the job and employee both feel replaceable.
These feelings are like to grow resentment over time,
and drains the energy from a workforce.

13. Because intrinsically rewarding jobs lead to high
retention of the empowered, high-energy, motivated
workers, and make workers feel valued and excited
about the impact they are making on the company
they feel partially responsible for, it really is a win-
win situation.

14. If you are not already, take a look at your
management practices and your employee
engagement. If you do not see a level of fostering
intrinsic rewards, start building it into your training,
your executive coaching, and your business core
values. Engage the middle of your workforce, not
just the top or the bottom. The company culture that
you can build by focusing on engendering your
workforce roles with the intrinsic rewards, the
healthier your workforce -and your business- can
be.