Have ever employed someone who seemed to have everything you wanted, seemed enthused about what you were offering but somehow didn't really take to the job? Chances are there was an issue with “motivational fit”.

To understand “motivational fit” there are four simple things you need to know:

• Every human being is motivated to do something (even if it is to avoid work). These “ somethings” are what we call motivators. The job of management to is identify what these are.
  
• People differ in their ability to sustain motivation (or to sustain action towards satisfying their motivators).
  
• Different individuals have different motivators which can change over time and are shaped by life's circumstances.
  
• Evaluating the fit between what motivates an employee and what your environment and role provides is essential to avoid a motivational mismatch.
  

Motivators

Motivators are the things people seek or strive for. In essence they are like a personal target or goal. They can be conscious or subconscious. Understanding an individual's motivators is the first step to evaluating whether you have a motivational match.

Maslow provided us with categories of motivators to enable understanding of the things that satisfy human drives or needs which can be reflected in the workplace through the following provisions:

Adapted from S Walton.

Maslow's motivators help us to understand what we might need to be looking for during the interview, however it was Freud who gave us the most significant clue in identifying individual motivators; The Pleasure Pain Principle-” people will tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain”. In practical terms people will dedicate their time, effort and energy to activities they enjoy and avoid activities they dislike or prefer less.

Here are some questions that will help you uncover employee motivators:

• Have candidates list their role responsibilities for previous roles
  
• Rank each responsibility from most preferred to least preferred. (Candidates will rarely tell you the truth about things they don't like about their job on interview)
  
• Ask them to breakdown their time allocation over each of the responsibilities

These types of questions tend to reveal:

• Linkages between less preferred (lower ranked activities) and reasons for leaving past roles
  
• Inconsistencies when preferences do not line up with great time usage identifying what real motivators were in the role
  
• The actual level of control the candidate had over different activities and how this impacted their satisfaction at work

Sustainability

Just because someone presents motivators that seem to fit with your environment does not mean their motivation will be sustainable.

Motivational sustainability is dependant on:

• Individual needs and personal circumstances
  
• Locus of control

People generally need to work to earn a living however choose the work they participate in. As a person's circumstances change, needs that were once relevant may no longer be important. Asking direct questions about personal needs and circumstances can be difficult due to EEO laws.

However, it is possible to identify what is really important to people by asking:

• What they hope to gain from the role personally and professionally
  
• The sorts of benefits the role should provide to attract the right people (most people respond with the things they would like)
  
• Other roles they have applied for and what was appealing about these

Locus of control is the extent to which we believe we control our own destinies. Locus of control has a direction – either external or internal. That direction has a major impact on the sustainability of motivation as shown in the table below.

People who have an external locus of control (e-loc) believe they have no control over the outcomes or destiny or shape of their life, and their actions do not make any difference. For E-loc people there is little point to try or to continue trying. These people are likely to blame external circumstances for outcomes and rarely take personal responsibility. Most importantly in the work-place these people expect others to “fix” issues so the workplace suits them.

At the other extreme, people who have an internal locus of control (i-loc) believe that life's outcomes are in their control and actively take action to achieve. These people are more likely to sustain effort and tend to take personal responsibility for successes and failures.

Both extremes of locus of control can be difficult to manage, however high e-loc people are less likely to sustain motivation even in areas that are important to them.

Questions that will assist in identifying a person's locus of control include:

• Reasons for leaving past roles. It will be important to identify external patterns of blame e.g. the organisation did not provide career development – yet the candidate may not have taken any initiative to improve themselves, expecting others to “fix their career prospects”
  
• Ask candidates what they would do if they were managing themselves or the team they were previously in. This will give an indication of what they are likely to expect of you. Ask yourself how realistic these expectations are
  
• When things went wrong in previous roles, who did they blame, and what action did they take to develop or improve. Avoidant behaviour is often a sign of an e-loc

Environmental Fit

Understanding they candidate is one thing. It is just as important to identify what you actually offer, the reasons why people choose to work and stay with you and the reasons why people may leave.

People often assume that conducting exit interviews will reveal this type of information, however employees are acutely aware of the need to keep potential referees on side and therefore are not likely to give you a true picture.

Effective methods for better understanding what attracts, retains and drives people out of your environment include:

• Conduct market benchmarking for salary benefits and condition offerings
  
• Conduct staff surveys annually to understand drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the workplace
  
• Listen to lunch room conversations and informal discussion
  
• Pay as much attention to what is not said by employees
  
• Develop your manager's in informally engaging staff

Identifying motivation is one of the most challenging elements in staff selection. It requires looking beyond the obvious and piecing together trends and patterns in behaviour over time. Successful motivational interviewing requires paying attention to the subtleties and using non-confronting questionning techniques.

To learn more contact Rebecca Cushway Rebecca@CareersExcelled.com.au