- Posted by dan on February 10, 2011
Not to long ago had a meeting at work about reward and recognition. The usual methods of reward came up, bonuses etc. Performance related pay, I was in the camp that wasn't really keen on extra money as an incentive. Before you think I'm crazy the reality is that everyone would have a pay cut in basic. The last 10% of your salary being made up for in bonus.
That was the proposal anyway. That didn't appeal to me.
For me and others like me I've always thought that time and freedom are more valuable. I've long wanted the fabled Google 20% time, dreaming about the cool things I could do in this time. Well Drive by Daniel Pink seems to more elegantly explore there ideas and other things relating to motivation. He does on to describe research done by psychologists that challenges our decidedly outdated views on motivation.
The three main themes are:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
The idea being that you'll be more motivated if you have greater autonomy at work and more control over the way you work. Some people will think this is the same as job enlargement but the book would disagree with this assertion, claiming enlargement is from an old way of thinking. It doesn't completely write off the bonus, it can apparently work in some instances, but mainly cites that in today'd world where increasingly we're in a knowledge and idea based economy the carrot and stick method as it refers to it isn't as effective.