Choose the right soil for your trees

Today, the war for talent is getting fiercer as organisations adopt and invent new and aggressive strategies, including poaching highly competent people from competitors.
Attracting new high-potential candidates, engaging current staff, and retaining the best people has, therefore, become a critical role for managers and direct supervisors.
Although the big-picture retention programme is implemented by the organisation, you need to ask yourself, how would you, as leaders, help engage people at a deeper and more personal level? People are like trees, different ones suit different soils and climate and, as a leader, you need to be able to identify these differences and provide the right medium for your people to flourish.
The trend in employee engagement and retention points towards a “customised approach” as employees are increasingly seen as individuals with different needs and rewards, and motivation tools are designed to reflect and accommodate these differences. Companies are trying harder to segment their employees in ways that help them better address different groups of people eg generation groups [Baby boomer, Gen X, Gen Y and so forth], young parents group, near-retirement group, technical people group, and others. This customised approach is a win-win because employees can enjoy the environment and rewards that suit their personal preferences and the organisation has a clearer focus for its efforts and resource utilisation.
But it is still a big job to turn a standard reward and motivation scheme into an individual-level engagement. Although standard policies may not be able to address the unique requirements of individuals, a more organic mechanism such as leaders can do that. While the human resources department looks at employee demographics in the macro picture, leaders need to go into a deeper level to understand their people’s psychology and the sources of their motivation. 
Undoubtedly, building this kind of deep understanding would require many hours of exposure to, and conversation with, the people of interest.  Therefore, at this point, psychological inventories can come in handy as leaders’ secret tools to help gain a quick, yet richer, understanding of their individual employees. 
One good example is the inventory called the Motives, Values, and Preferences Inventory (MVPI) developed by Hogan Assessments. Based on the assimilation of over 80 years of research, people’s source of motivation can be categorised into 10 scales. A person’s scores on each of the scales will identify what are the strong and weak motivators for that person.

--The 10 motivation scales are:
1 Recognition and appreciation from others [Hogan called this Recognition]
2 Success, accomplishment and the ability to exert authority (Power)
3 Enjoyment and appreciation of life (Hedonism)
4 Ability to help improve the life of people in need (Altruistic),
5 Social interaction (Affiliation),
6 Established tradition, culture, and beliefs (Tradition),
7 Predictability and security in life (Security),
8 Profits and money-making (Commerce),
9 Creativity and artistic expression (Aesthetics),
10 Updated knowledge, technology, and understanding of how things work (Science).  
People generally have one or more strong motivators, and insight into these sources of motivation can provide the opportunity for leaders to engage their employees at the personal level [and will also clearly indicate what won’t work when it comes to motivating the individual employees]. Even without accurate scores from values assessments, good leaders automatically and intuitively start to match their people with these values, observing their people to prove their hypotheses, and approaching their employees in different and more insightful ways.
So, assuming that you have correctly identified the motivators for a staff member, how do you utilise this information to personalise your motivation strategy?
If you identify an employee as being motivated by Recognition, then creating an environment and opportunities for this person to shine and show his or her expertise, and to receive public praise and recognition, would be a great motivator for this person. 
If you identify somebody as attaching high value to Power, opportunities and rewards that help increase their authority and their ability to make a difference will increase their motivation. A workplace and leaders that assign them high-profile projects, give them appropriate authority to take charge, and provide challenges and opportunities to create success will be a differentiated and engaging workplace for them.
If you identify somebody with high Hedonism, you should realise the work should leave room for, or come with, fun, pleasure, and enjoyment. These people want to enjoy their life inside work and outside work. If they are hardworking, they will be motivated by opportunities to enjoy the fruits of their labors and will work hard/play hard.
Those with motivated by Altruism want to feel that they are contributing something positive and making the world a better place to live for everyone.  They are naturally drawn towards sectors such as healthcare and teaching but can also fit into mainstream organisations although they will likely prefer roles that allow them to help and develop others and would also expect their company to have a strong corporate social responsibility policy. 
People motivated by Affiliation will prefer environments in which they work with others and have opportunities to build relationships and feel “part of the gang”, so make sure you put them in a work environment where they can enjoy varied social interaction. Open-space offices and work activities that support and encourage interaction and networking will provide an energising environment for these people.
When it comes to people attaching strong value to Tradition, leaders need to recognise and respect the strong core values and principles that these people hold on to. To create appeal for these people, you need to provide structure and hierarchy, encourage a strong sense of duty and pay respect to past achievements and the traditions of the organisation. Loyalty and dependability are powerful qualities for high Tradition people.
To motivate people who value Security, make sure they see your efforts to create a cautious and risk-free environment in your work group.  Knowing that their future is safe and they will be taken care of is very important for the people with this value. Performance-based incentives do not work well with them because the “variable” characteristic threatens their Security value.
In many ways, the easiest people to motivate are those who value Commerce. Providing them opportunities to make money and even helping them manage their money is the obvious motivator here, but high Commerce people are also interested in business and making money, so they are likely to be stimulated by opportunities to act entrepreneurially and responsibility for bottom-line performance. While performance-based incentives do not work well with people with high Security, they strongly energise people with high Commerce value.
For people with high Aesthetics, an environment that encourages creativity and informality is likely to motivate them. The appearance of physical surroundings and the final look of the finished products is really important to them. Provide opportunities for exploration, innovation, and artistic expression and avoid tying them up with data and rules.
Finally, for people who value Science, allow their passion for updated knowledge, research, technology and data to play a great part in fulfilling their roles.  Be sure to provide them with updated technology and challenge them with fact-based and practical problem solving.
Motivation is like a tree.  It is organic – it can grow or wither away. As caretakers of the trees, leaders need to be able to identify the types of tree they are nurturing, pick the right soil to plant them in, and create the best climate for them to flourish. Be an observant leader or adopt value assessments to build your insight in order to develop individualised motivation strategies to help your forest grow.

Story and illustration by Orapun Parapob, senior strategic human resource and organisational development consultant at APMGroup. For more information about motivation assessment, please contact [email protected]