Do your Intrinsic Motivators change? And if so, how do you know?
Change is the only constant in life, as the old adage goes—a universal truth that the events of the past two years have firmly underlined.
But it’s not just the world and the circumstances we find ourselves in that are in a constant state of flux—people change too, of course. Indeed, in the context of Attuned, our early research suggests that people’s Motivator Profiles evolve over time in response to significant changes in both their work and their personal lives. As such, we’ve decided to introduce a new feature that reflects this: the Motivation Assessment Retake.
If you’ve used Attuned before, you’ll know that the Motivation Assessment is key to the whole process. This ten-minute, 55-question survey allows our AI-and-psychology-driven platform to determine the Intrinsic Motivators that are most important to that person, data that is then translated into a unique Intrinsic Motivator Report that is used to help develop better communication, personalize the employee experience, and ultimately make work more meaningful.
Previously, it wasn’t possible for a user to take a Motivation Assessment more than once, but now people can retake it as often as required and compare the results with previous versions, providing not only an insight into the things that are most important to that person, but also a clear view of how their personal hierarchy of motivational needs has changed over time.
Changing Roles
At EQIQ (Attuned’s parent company), all employees already retake the Motivation Assessment once a year. Do people’s Motivators vary every time? The short answer: some do and some don’t. Those who do have significant differences in their Profile from one year to the next have usually had some sort of promotion or other role change at work, or a life-changing personal milestone such as getting married or having children.
It’s always interesting to hear how my colleagues’ Motivators have changed, and the reasons that may lie behind those changes; Security and Financial Needs, for example, often rise after starting a family. Likewise, I’ve seen some significant differences in my own Motivator Report, most notably when I started my current role as Customer Success Manager, which was a totally new area for me.
Before I changed roles, my top Motivators had been Status, Altruism, and Financial Needs (Report #1). After starting the role, however, my Profile changed so that Feedback became my only ‘Need to have’ (Report #2). This made sense because, since I was stepping into a new position in an unfamiliar area, I needed a lot more feedback and support. Progressing in my career (Status) and helping others (Altruism) were still important to me, they just weren’t my primary motivation at that time.
After a year in my new role, however, my top three Motivators changed back to Status, Financial Needs and Altruism (Report #3), with Feedback in fourth place (now just as a ‘Nice to have’). Since I had received enough feedback and become confident in the job, my Feedback needs lessened and my previous top Motivators regained their former level of priority.
Another year has passed since then, and in my most recent retake in December (Report #4), Feedback was once again among my top Motivators. The reason? In between I had a baby and took maternity leave, and by the time I came back, I had a new boss, new team, and a lot of things I had to (re)learn.
Self-awareness & Trend-spotting
As well as allowing individuals and managers to visualize shifting priorities within themselves and their teams, retaking the Motivation Assessment also helps to create a greater sense of self-awareness and the ability to track and reflect on change over time. It also gives managers the opportunity to communicate with and motivate their team based on the latest Motivator Report, while on a wider scale it offers the longer-term potential to track and measure changing trends within a company, a city, a country, or even globally. Based on this data, individuals and companies will then be better positioned to make positive changes.
For me, retakes have been crucial in allowing me to develop a deeper understanding of myself and my motivational needs, thus providing me with clearer direction on what I should focus on, and making work more enjoyable and more meaningful overall. It’s also been useful for my direct manager, who was able to see how my Intrinsic Motivators had changed and adjust his management and communication style accordingly.
New Data & Research Opportunities
On a global scale, a life-changing event all of us have been through, and continue to go through, is of course the pandemic, and by using Attuned’s unique dataset, we were able to highlight a number of interesting trends in terms of how employees’ Intrinsic Motivation changed from pre- to mid-pandemic. Now, with even more data becoming available through the retake feature, it opens up to a whole new level of research possibilities and valuable insights.
What types of insights? Well, it will allow us to answer questions like:
“Does satisfaction of the motives reduce how strongly they are valued?” According to the Two Process Model, if someone is having their needs met, then their corresponding motives would go down.
Or “To what extent are some Motivators ‘locked in’ or permanent, and others situation-dependent?” For example, Feedback tends to rank high for new starters or new grads. But is this inherent in this demographic, or is it actually because they have a greater need for support and reassurance for that particular period only, just like it was for me?
Ultimately, being able to answer these questions will allow us to develop more suggested actions to improve the work experience for all our users while giving managers greater insights into their employees and teams.
Powerful Questions
To get the most out of the Motivation Assessment Retake, our team of psychologists have come up with a list of powerful questions to ask alongside the retake. These include:
What were the key insights you received the last time you took the Assessment?
Are there any surprising results in the latest Motivation Assessment? If so, why are these surprising?
How have your workplace relationships changed since the last time you took the Assessment?
How have all the changes caused by the pandemic affected your priorities and values? Were these experiences reflected in the latest Assessment?
Describe how your goals for your work and job have changed since the last Assessment.
Were there any changes in your professional or personal life since your last Assessment? If so, do you feel these changes affected your motivation at work?