Culture plays such an enormous role in companies,that investors know that regardless of the economic possibilities, if there are cultural issues the challenges of the company may be irreparable. Culture bleeds beyond the staff to the customers/patients/members/clients. If you have a culture of mission, referral, and opportunity your business is likely to be fun, thriving, and growing organically rather than feel like an uphill battle all of the time to reduce attrition, push compliance, and need to force people to recommend you and engage online.
Many psychological variables play key roles in creating a winning culture. I’m going to cover:
- Motivation
- Measuring success
- Steps beyond monetary incentives and discounts.
Job satisfaction and motivation
Several of the variables related to satisfaction impact employee motivation. Motivation is combination of internal drive that move a worker to act and external factors that influence them to take action (Locke & Latham, 2002). THIS MEANS THAT STEP 1 IS HIRING RIGHT.
The individual difference theory points out that some element of job satisfaction is an inherited trait that gives people a tendency to like or dislike whatever it is that they do (Ilies & Judge, 2003). In support of this are four personality traits that give people a predisposition to be satisfied with their work and their life in general. These traits are: emotional stability, self-esteem, self-efficacy (the perceived ability to master their environment), and internal locus of control the perceived ability to control their environment) (Judge, Locke, and Durham, 1997). These people tend to have high self-esteem, are pleased with their work, and feel like they have a grip on their lives and careers.
All of these traits can be tested. Personality trait assessments have been shown to be directly connected to motivation and performance. For example, in looking at testing the Big 5 traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and stability, predispose employees to motivation. Conscientiousness best predicts work and academic performance along with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Stability is most affiliated with salary and setting high goals. Extraversion is the most connected with promotions received (Aamodt, 2013).
PART 1 OF 3
In the next part, we’ll discuss setting expectations and principles for incentives that really work. Finally, in Part 3, you’ll learn how to build an organically growing and thriving culture of customers/clients/patients/members.
References
Aamodt, M. (2013) Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach, Seventh
Edition. Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Ilies, R., & Judge, T. A. (2003). On the heritability of job satisfaction: The mediating role of
personality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 750–759.
Judge, T. A., Locke, E. A., & Durham, C. C. (1997). The dispositional causes of job satisfaction:
A core evaluations approach. Research in Organizational Behavior, 19(1), 151–188.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and
task motivation. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717.
