Rewards Aren’t the Key to Employee Motivation


Cornerstone On Demand has the post Ted Talk Tuesday: Rewards Aren’t the Key to Employee Motivation.

In his TED Talk, “The Puzzle of Motivation,” Pink explores what motivates people and how company leaders can apply this research to their own organizations. He goes on to explain what social scientists know, but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think.


There is a lot of truth here, but don’t get carried away by a good sales pitch.

Some detail about the subject of motivation can be gleaned from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, coincidentally from WikiPedia.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” in Psychological Review.


Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the more basic needs at the bottom

Companies I worked for had the practice of periodically announcing special rewards for exceptional achievement. I don’t know how much of an incentive this presented to the winners of the award, but I frequently observed what a disincentive it was to all those people who thought they had done great work, but did not receive any special award or acclaim. To the “self-actualized” people, the lack of a reward was only a temporary disappointment.

I was led to this video by a comment on the post A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you in Naked Capitalism.

Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be distributed according to skill and effort. The most common metaphor is the ‘even playing field’ upon which players can rise to the position that fits their merit. Conceptually and morally, meritocracy is presented as the opposite of systems such as hereditary aristocracy, in which one’s social position is determined by the lottery of birth. Under meritocracy, wealth and advantage are merit’s rightful compensation, not the fortuitous windfall of external events.

Here, again, is an article with some merit, but be very careful that you don’t get carried away with the ideas in the article.

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