Why do we work?

The other day a student of mine said she was looking to change jobs as she wanted to be compensated better. I asked her if the quality of the job itself was important or just the compensation? Before working from home became the new normal, digital technology transformed how and where work gets done and how many people are needed to complete it. Work itself has been deeply questioned. In the wake of the pandemic, companies need to rebuild a workforce better prepared for an economy where routine and repeatable tasks are increasingly machine-enabled. Animals indulge in two main activities; hunting or foraging for food and reproduction. Humans seem to be distinct. Various needs drive us. People work, not necessarily for an everyday meal or to reproduce.?

Academics and researchers have studied why people work for nearly a hundred years. A startling breakthrough happened in the 1980s when professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester distinguished six main reasons why people work.

The six main reasons people work are:?

1. play
2. purpose
3. potential
4. emotional pressure
5. economic pressure
6. inertia

• Play?is when a person is motivated by the work itself, and the work is brilliantly crafted and requires skill and tenacity. Play is the learning instinct, tied to curiosity, experimentation, and exploring challenging problems that test our ability and ask the employee to stretch themselves.
• The purpose?is where the direct outcome of the employees' work fits the employee's identity. The employee works because they value the work's impact—for example, a professor driven by purpose, values or identifies to educate and empower young people.
• Potential?is when the outcome or result of the work benefits the worker's identity. In other words, the work enhances the potential of the employee. An analogy is a teacher with potential may be doing his job because he eventually wants to become a dean. It is also the reason why a career path is essential.

Since the above three motives are directly connected to the work itself, we can think of them as direct motives. They will improve performance to different degrees.?

Indirect reasons, however, tend to dissipate it.

• Emotional pressure?is when the employee works because some external force threatens their identity. This parameter is wholly divorced from work itself. Anxiety, fear, peer pressure, and shame are all forms of emotional pressure in different combinations.
• Economic?pressure is when an external force or pressure makes us work. The employee works to gain a reward or avoid punishment in the economic sense. Now the parameter is not only separate from the work itself but also the workers' identity. There is an apparent disconnect.
• Inertia?is where the motive is so far removed from the work and identity that the worker cannot identify why they are at work. There is an absolute lack of understanding. When you ask employees why they are doing the work, they are engaged and say, "I don't know; I'm doing it because I did it as a habit with no motivation," this points to?inertia. It is still a motive because you're still actually doing the activity; you can't explain why.

The next time you head off to work, ask yourself why you are doing so and what your motivator is. More importantly, ask your subordinates and peers, as to why do they turn up for work daily and face the grind? If they fall in the amongst the bottom three parameters there is a problem.