Getting people to do their best work, even in trying circumstances, is one of managers’ most enduring and slippery challenges.

Fortunately, new cross-disciplinary research in fields such as neuroscience, biology and evolutionary psychology has allowed us to learn more about the human brain.

Our synthesis of the research suggests that people are guided by four basic emotional needs, or drives, that are the product of our common evolutionary heritage. These are: to acquire (obtain scarce objects, including intangibles such as social status); to bond (form connections with individuals and groups); to comprehend (satisfy our curiosity and master the world around us); and to defend (protect against external threats and promote justice). These drives underlie everything we do.

Managers attempting to boost motivation should take note. But what actions, precisely, can managers take to satisfy the four drives and, thereby, increase their employees overall motivation?

We recently completed two major studies aimed at answering that question. In one we interviewed 385 employees of two global businesses and in the other 300 employees from Fortune 500 companies. To define overall motivation we focused on four commonly measured workplace indicators: engagement, satisfaction, commitment and intention to quit. The research showed that an organisation’s ability to meet the four fundamental drives explains, on average, about 60 per cent of employees’ variance on motivational indicators.

Although fulfilling all four basic emotional drives is essential for any company, our research suggests that each drive is best met by a distinct organisational lever.

The drive to acquire is most easily satisfied by an organisation’s reward system: how efficiently it discriminates between good and poor performers, ties rewards to performance and gives the best people opportunities for advancement.

The most effective way to fulfil the drive to bond is to create a culture that promotes teamwork, collaboration, openness and friendship.

The drive to comprehend is best addressed by designing jobs that are meaningful, interesting and challenging.

And finally fair, trustworthy and transparent processes for performance management and resource allocation help to met people’s drive to defend.

Our research also revealed that organisations don’t have an absolute monopoly on employee motivation or on fulfilling people’s emotional drives. Employees’ perceptions of their immediate managers matter just as much. Employees in our study attributed as much importance to their boss’s meeting their four drives as to the organisational policies.

This article was extracted from Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model, by Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg and Linda-Eling Lee, published in the Harvard Business Review (July-Aug 2008). www.hbr.org

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