Professional motivation: What drives you?

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Companies depend on competent and performance-oriented employees to achieve their corporate goals. But not every employee knows what exactly drives him in his job and how strong an individual motivating factor is. If you want to be good and achieve many professional successes, you should know what drives you. And supervisors should also know about the motivation of their employees.

Classical motivation theory assumes two types of needs, which can be divided into basic needs and higher needs. The former ensure survival (obtaining food, clothing, protection from the cold, personal safety). Higher needs arise when the basic needs are satisfied. These include success, recognition, fun and joy. They drive us to get up in the morning and become active. Much of this happens voluntarily and without coercion - this is called free motivation. In the following, we give you food for thought to create your own motivation profile.

According to the EY Job Study 2021, only 28 percent of employees are highly motivated at work, but the other 72 percent have not necessarily chosen the wrong job. The question is whether they are employed in the right department and in the right position in your company.

Our tip
Draw up a personal checklist of your tasks and check whether you can use your talents appropriately in all sub-areas and whether there are other specialist deployment opportunities for you in your company.

Companies still rely on monetary motivational factors to motivate their employees to perform at their best. Whether it is a salary increase, a company outing or awards - in many companies all employees are rewarded in the same way. But not every employee is satisfied with the same rewards and the same working conditions. Rather, it is about individual values, goals and motives that each individual wants to live for himself. For human resources work, this means creating appropriate framework conditions in which different personalities can develop. As a reward for a successfully completed project, different bonuses can motivate employees, be it a theatre voucher for one employee, a day of special leave for another project employee and a meal for two in a restaurant for a third.

Our tip
Put down on paper your personal on-duty motivating factors that spur you on to top performance and communicate these with your supervisor, because only if he knows your personal motivation for your work - both professional and personal - can he promote and deploy you properly.

If an employee knows what really drives and motivates him compared to others, he can focus more objectively and better on what is really important to him. He also recognises that other people "tick" differently and perhaps see things differently. Those who understand this can see other opinions more easily and also let them stand. Acceptance of other opinions increases.

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