Sustaining motivation – How can organisations boost engagement and capture higher growth?

Immediate or delayed rewards for enhancing productivity and engagement ?

In an interesting study by Udemy, 2016 Udemy Workplace Boredom Study, it is found that almost 43 percent of workers report feeling bored at work and Millennials are almost two times as likely to be bored while 51 percent of respondents who described issues with boredom stated they feel this way for more than half of their work week. Boredom far from being a trivial issue could lead to serious repercussions on one’s mental and emotional health. Hence, sustaining motivation is a challenge with numerous forms of distractions – while the distraction might be related to personal or professional lives. No one feels hundred percent motivated for the work all the time.

No matter what organisations you work for and irrespective of your field of expertise if, there are times when you feel like motivation is slipping away with time passing by, whether you admit or not but it happens. The higher incidence of such workplace boredom could be detrimental for the organisation’s growth or annual outcomes as it could lead to “the contagion effect” as an employee complaining about boredom spreads the boredom effect amongst other fellow colleagues. This is similar to an example of financial market slowdown with a superb example of the failure of Lehman Brothers in the United States is leading to global economic slowdown.

It’s important to monitor, diagnose and address thoughts of negativity, slipping of motivation and pessimism as soon as one realize early warning signals. Once diagnosed then it’s important to take action in term of diversifying the working style by attaching a reward mechanism as you see yourself accomplishing some bits of your tasks. These rewards could be as small as having a cup of coffee with friends for say, 15-20 minutes after finishing a chunk of work while the relatively bigger rewards could be going out for a vacation of say a month when the long term project of say 6 months time is over. Immediate rewards are certainly very effective at enhancing our productivity as opposed to the delayed rewards, for instance, some is deployed onsite for 3 years project and they set a target to him/her that they wouldn’t got to visit their family in their hometown unless the whole project is completed. Such tough timelines might be more of a punishment then a reward. Immediate rewards help enhance the productivity and our levels interest in the task at hand. Professor Kaitlin Woolley, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the SC Johnson Cornell College of Business conducted a study titled It’s about time: Earlier rewards increase intrinsic motivation where she compared immediate versus delayed rewards and found that greater immediate rewards increase intrinsic motivation by creating a perceptual fusion between the activity and its goal (i.e., the reward). Typically, an activity is fundamentally motivated when it is experienced as goal in itself that is, when an individual is motivated to pursue the activity for its own sake due to the benefits for pursuing the activity cannot be separated from it(Heath, 1999; Woolley & Fishbach, 2018)

Distractions are not always bad except for the times when you find those hindering your progress against the satisfaction of completing tasks. Unfinished tasks always make us feel miserable and distractions might be bad if they don’t let us finish the task and deadlines we have been chasing for. However, some distractions in terms of short breaks are helpful as they us regain and sustaining your motivation which tend to fade away with time as we end up working on same tasks repetitively for a sustained period of time. To deepen our knowledge over the topic it’s important to understand the definition of “Boredom”. Professor John. D. Eastwood at the University of York, Toronto defines boredom as “a state of being disengaged from one’s environment, reflecting a passive relationship to one’s work”. In an interesting study, The Unengaged Mind: Defining Boredom in Terms of Attention, Eastwood et al.(2012) synthesised psychodynamic, existential, arousal, and cognitive theories of boredom and they argued that boredom worldwide can be conceptualized as “the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity. From systematic review of previous studies, they found that boredom could lead to a range of issues spanning across mental health (such as, depression and anxiety, the psychiatric rehabilitation of mental disorders, such as schizophrenia), physical health (e.g., can cause accidents at workplace such as long-haul truck driving), recovery from serious brain injuries, impact on finding a sense of purpose in life, behavioral problems(e.g., impulse control deficits such as overeating and binge eating, drug and alcohol abuse etc.) (Eastwood et al., 2012; Goldberg et al., 2011; Weybright et al., 2019). Bruursema et al.(2011) studied the associations among boredom proneness, job boredom, and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) (e.g., trait anger, abuse against others, production deviance, sabotage, withdrawal and theft. They found that work related boredom showed strong relationships with different types of various types of CWB and hence, an improved knowledge of boredom is critical for developing interventions to mitigate CWB (Bruursema et al., 2011). 

One of the finest takeaways for organisations from 2016 Udemy Workplace Boredom Study is to develop emotional intelligence towards the most crucial employee motivator that is, the employee’s personal view of their future. Entrepreneurs and Business leaders must help people envision their future career and learning path in order to effectively engage them. Boushey and Glynn (2012) in a study conducted for Centre for America Progress revealed that designing flexible workplace policies to holistically benefit employees lead to increased overall yield and benefit to the organisations in terms of improved workforce retention, improved commitment and resulting substantial cost savings. The flexible workplace polices directed towards empowerment of employees include but is not limited to flexible working hours tailored to individuals best productive hours, enhancing and diversifying employee financial profit making avenues and boosting of employees self-confidence and flexibility to choose the roles most apt for their expertise and interests.

Lee et al. (2018) performed an organisational behaviour study related to the leaders empowering subordinates and analysed data from 105 studies (including more than 30,000 employees from across 30 countries). They based their study ion research question - whether an empowering leadership style was linked to improved job performance, and testing whether this was true of different types of performance, such as routine task performance, organizational citizenship behaviour and creativity. The study found that empowering leaders are much more effective at influencing employee creativity and citizenship behavior (i.e., supporting co-workers, attending non-compulsory organisation events) than routine task performance, trust-building, enhancing employee performance, positively influencing employees with relatively lesser work experience in their organizations, greater alignment of workforce with organisation needs and employees finding meaning in their work.  

Here are some tips for individuals and organisations from CIPD report titled Cross-sector insights on enabling flexible working to deepen the engagement of employees at workplace and for boosting individual and organisational productivity. For individuals, flexible working means working arrangements which allow employees to vary the amount, timing, or location of their work and it helps them in multiple ways such as, balancing caring/non-work responsibilities with work, flexibility for life’s emergencies, and flexibility for life’s interests and commitments while at organisation levels, it helps organisations in terms of retention and recruitment, employee engagement and loyalty, and positive influence on employee work performance.  

At personal level, below are some simplified strategies to cope with boredom and to reinvigorate your motivation at work and for adding meaning into your life –

(1) Take a break immediately and preferably visit a fountain or a lakeside or coolest coffee shop

(2) Introspect during this time alone to identify the potential reasons of your bored-out and consequent burnt-out. 

(3) Is it related to repetitiveness of the same task which you have been doing for long then it might be ideal to switch to some other less demanding task and which could be completed soon and hence could give you some kick.

(4) If it is because of some personal reasons such as not reciprocating or unfulfilled expectations then preferably you might need a longer time off and maybe it’s worth looking for a one day escape to make it a sort of picnic with close friend(s).

(5) Join some meditation classes along with some physical workout session and listening to your favourite motivational speakers or spiritual gurus.

(6) Try having a dialogue with line managers to diversify your work profile to somewhat while discussing with your line managers or bosses as generally bosses in the present day work cultures are receptive of their employees wellbeing and mental health. Or, you could be able to shadow someone from an entirely different section of the organisation.

(7) Rather than doing a job switch it could be preferable to fix the issues unless something is terribly wrong with that organisation as the saying goes that the grass on other side always looks greener but it may or may not be green and you might end up finding even more toxic people and job responsibilities at a new workplace. 

(8) Start learning something new, say, a new language or join some coursework or training in an unrelated field for instance, if you are from engineering field then might want to join some management related training session such as, Global Leadership Programme with some diversified course contents and lectures including some volunteer work.

(9) Pursue some activity about which you have been most passionate and have not been able to do it for long. It’s the right time to start it or to repeat it. You don’t need to be perfect to do it but giving it up completely might make it hard for you later to practice it. This could be a sports, bush-walking, leisure walking, adventure activity, dancing, singing or giving a talk on your favorite topic in case you like public speaking.

(10) Stop browsing social media sites and start connecting with people in person as much as possible. People tend to boast off on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram and they try to present a distorted picture of their own life and likely hide or avoid posting while something difficult is going in their lives. People generally are shy of exposing their vulnerabilities as opposed to the hardships they are going through in their lives. While you browse social media sites while you are bored then the distorted reality presented by your colleagues of “Seemingly Superior Lifestyles” might make you envy and upset especially while you are bored. So it’s much better to refrain from idly browsing social media sites when you feel idle. Today, we are becoming more acquainted with our friends’ digital facades than their real-life personas. Also as humans we crave for intimate and deeper connections with other fellow humans and hence chatting on social media sites with digital versions of our friends might be depressing and unfulfilling in the long run. Hunt et al. (2018) have associated the use of social media to depression, anxiety, poor sleep quality, low self-esteem, inattention, hyperactivity in children and FOMO(i.e., Fear of Missing Out, an anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on social media).

The ubiquitous penetration of social media use into our typical lifestyles has far-reaching consequences and has nearly affected us at all levels. It has altered our perception and the way we think and act. It requires immediate attention and intervention. So, let us ignore it no more!

References

Boushey, Heather, and Sarah Jane Glynn. 2012. There Are Significant Business Costs to Replacing Employees.

Bruursema, Kari, Stacey R. Kessler, and Paul E. Spector. 2011. “Bored Employees Misbehaving: The Relationship between Boredom and Counterproductive Work Behaviour.” Work and Stress 25(2): 93–107.

Eastwood, John D., Alexandra Frischen, Mark J. Fenske, and Daniel Smilek. 2012. “The Unengaged Mind.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(5): 482–95. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691612456044 (November 23, 2019).

Heath, Chip. 1999. “On the Social Psychology of Agency Relationships: Lay Theories of Motivation Overemphasize Extrinsic Incentives.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 78(1): 25–62.

Hunt, Melissa G., Rachel Marx, Courtney Lipson, and Jordyn Young. 2018. “No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 37(10): 751–68. https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751 (November 24, 2019).

Lee, Allan, Sara Willis, and Amy Wei Tian. 2018. “Empowering Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Examination of Incremental Contribution, Mediation, and Moderation.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 39(3): 306–25.

Weybright, EH, J Schulenberg, LL Caldwell - Journal of Adolescent Health, and undefined 2019. “More Bored Today than Yesterday? National Trends in Adolescent Boredom from 2008 to 2017.” Elsevier. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X19304793 (November 23, 2019).

Woolley, Kaitlin, and Ayelet Fishbach. 2018. “It’s About Time: Earlier Rewards Increase Intrinsic Motivation.” https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000116.supp (November 23, 2019).