What Moves Us: How Intrinsic Motivation Has Changed Since the Pandemic

BY Erika Riley | May 10, 2023

While employers can readily calculate the market rates for external rewards like pay and perks, what’s more elusive is an understanding of the internal factors that light their workers’ fires.

Knowing what moves you and your employees, also known as intrinsic motivation, can be the key to increased productivity, better working environments, and improved relationships.  

Yet here’s the tricky part: over time, those factors can change among individuals, as well as change among groups. The pandemic, for example, changed virtually every aspect of our working lives. For many of us, it made us come to terms with our most important values, or perhaps changed those values altogether.

Attuned, a company that helps employers understand what motivates their teams, focuses directly on intrinsic motivation, which it defines as the individual combination of values and preferences that drive us from within. Knowing an individual’s motivators and playing into them can help increase engagement, elevate performance levels, and improve well-being.

Attuned has collected tens of thousands of intrinsic motivator profiles through its 55-question assessment. With its 2023 data, the company has compiled trends that show how the most popular core motivators have changed over time.

The company developed a list of the 11 key intrinsic motivators with the help of psychologists and experts in the field. They are altruism, autonomy, competition, feedback, financial needs, innovation, progress, rationality, security, social relationships, and status.

After taking the assessment, the assessment-taker receives a score of 0-100 for each of the key motivators. The higher the number, the more important this value is to them. If they score between 68% and 100%, the motivator is a “need-to-have.” They need this motivator to be satisfied and feel like they’re working on something that matters.

So how have the most popular key motivators changed over time? Attuned’s team discussed the evolution of its findings from 2018 to 2022 in its State of Motivation Report 2023 and an accompanying webinar. Among the highlights:

Increasing Motivators

Two motivators saw an increase between 2018 and 2022: security and financial needs. In a time of crisis and uncertainty, it makes sense that these two motivators, which are very popular among people in general, became even more common during the pandemic.

People motivated by security have a desire for planning and predictability and feel a need for precisely defined rules and clear frameworks and spheres of responsibility. Security had an all-time low average of 45% in the fourth quarter of 2018 and an all-time high of 65% in the third quarter of 2019, then dipped back to 54% by the fourth quarter of 2022. It is the third-most common of all motivators, but is the No. 1 motivator for women.

The increase of security as a motivator can also be explained by the shift from a promotion focus to a prevention focus. “People are moving away from the idea that we need new things; now we just need stability for a little while,” said Paul Kay, head of content at Attuned

Financial needs are the most common top motivator and highest motivator score across the board. Its average scores fluctuated a lot between 2018 and 2022, with a range of 17% between its all-time high and all-time low scores. However, it’s seen an upward trend overall, with a steady rise from the first quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2022.

The financial needs motivator is not all about pay and bonuses. People motivated by financial needs have a desire for financial security and well-being, and prefer activities that generate profit and endeavors that accumulate and safeguard wealth.

“I think what we see with these motivational shifts is people don’t jump too often from something being on the left-hand side of those charts, where it’s a low need-to-have, all the way to the high need-to-have. These are based on your values, which are really deep inside you,” said Casey Wahl, the company’s CEO and co-founder. “The way I look at it is something has to happen really emotionally and leave a deep emotional imprint on your brain to shift things up. And I think what we’re seeing in these shifts in financial needs and security is people that were in the middle somewhere, but then the importance just shifted up.”

Declining Motivators

Meanwhile, other intrinsic motivators declined between 2018 and 2022: autonomy, competition, feedback, innovation, progress, and rationality.

People with the autonomy motivator want to develop and preserve financial freedom and be able to do things in a way that makes sense for them. They strive for independence in decision-making and time management. There was a 9% decrease between the fourth quarter of 2019 and second quarter of 2022, perhaps as a result of autonomy needs being over-satisfied by the increased prevalence of remote work during the pandemic.

“Most people in the time of remote work and work from home probably had more autonomy than they've ever had,” said Kay.  “A need has been over-satisfied for a lot of people. I’ve had more autonomy than I perhaps need and now I need a little bit more structure.”

However, because there was only a 9% decrease, it’s a stat worth keeping an eye on in the future.

Competition is the second most common top motivator, but saw a decline from 66% in the third quarter of 2019 to 51% in the fourth quarter of 2022. People with the competition motivator are attracted to challenges and competitive situations and enjoy testing themselves against others to determine their level of success.

“These I find quite interesting, because, sure there’s a Covid explanation, but I actually miss the competition. I have high competition. I've been craving that,” said Chad Lafferty, VP of global sales at Attuned. “Me being in the office and around people a little bit more has been very very helpful just because competitive people tend to play these little games in their head, right? Like, ‘I’m going to do this just a little bit faster and nobody else knows that you're doing it but you’re constantly competing.”

Feedback falls in the middle of the pack among top motivators, and took a deep fall during the pandemic. It reached an all-time high of 52% in third quarter of 2019, and an all-time low of 39% in the fourth quarter of 2022. People who are motivated by feedback need evaluation and recognition in all areas of life, but especially to validate their work efforts and reinforce a sense of worth.

Kristine Ayuzawa, Attuned’s director of people operations, wondered if new tech and virtual workplaces have filled a need for feedback, with standard one-on-one meetings and feedback forms. The environment we work in and the tech we use can influence our motivators over time.

Added Wahl: “I've talked about how emotions change our values as well, but it’s also a lot from our environment. So what are we experiencing day to day and how is the environment changing our behavior and our habits? All that kind of sinks in and affects our values.”

Innovation and progress also took hits during the pandemic. Innovation saw an all-time high of 59% in the second quarter of 2018 and an all-time low of 33% in the the second quarter of 2022, although it did see an upward trend in the second half of 2022.

The Attuned team hypothesizes that this decline might be related to many people and companies switching from a promotion focus to a prevention focus. This shift often happens in times of uncertainty and stress. People begin to value stability more and take fewer risks.

On the other hand, some people thrive on innovation during economic downturns.

“When you get into downturns or recessions, it’s when they say generational startups are created,” said Wahl. “I wonder if that’s partly because there’s less competition, less people chasing ideas, less people pursuing ideas that they stand out.”

Progress took a similar downturn from an all-time high of 60% in the second quarter of 2018 to an all-time low of 35% in the second quarter of 2022. People motivated by progress are driven to acquire new skills, expand their knowledge, and grow personally and professionally.

Progress might be less important right now as people are burned out in many areas of life, the Attuned team thought. Coming out of a global pandemic and facing a recession can make it difficult for people to want to pursue growth.

“It's just a differentiation in where people are putting their attention and what's going to be most critical to them,” said Ayuzawa. “I'm curious to see where things go as things improve.”

Lastly, rationality took a strong downturn from an all-time high of 45% in the first quarter of 2019 to an all-time low of 23% in the third quarter of 2022. Rationality is the rarest of all top motivators. People motivated by rationality are attracted to logical, objective, and scientific methods and processes. 
“You can come up with all kinds of rational explainations for stuff but it doesn’t necessarily lead to emotion,” said Wahl. “So people’s emotions are being affected in different ways. My finances are killing me, my credit cards are maxed out, the interest rates are going up, and I feel that emotional pian every single day. Whereas something like rationality might not drop that chemical bond in your head to move your values there.”

The Most Steady Motivators

Three motivators largely stayed the same over the course of 2018 to 2023: altruism, social relationships, and status.

People with the altruism motivator are grounded in the desire to help, support, and maintain the well-being of others and crave mutual support and encouragement in their workplace. It’s the fourth-most-common top motivator, and displayed only a 6% difference in its minimum and maximum values during this time period.

Social relationships also stayed fairly steady, with an all-time high of 46% in the second quarter of 2018 and all-tme low of 38% in the fourth quarter of 2022. People with the social-relationships motivator need frequent and mutual social interactions and want to belong to a group. 

The status motivator can be defined as a desire for reputation, recognition, and respect, along with continuous progress through the ranks. It’s the fifth-most-common of all motivators and its average scores rarely changed between the first quarter of 2018 (53%) and the fourth quarter of 2022 (49%).

“The reality that we are social creatures and the reliance we have on other people and wanting to know where we stand in the pack is something that’s probably pretty deeply engrained in us just as humans,” said Ayuzawa. Wahl agreed, positing that the need for social relationships, working for the common good, and being respected are perhaps core human traits.

“Slightly above half of the population has these deeper needs for connectivity,” he said. “Maybe those are deeper, stable human desires and we’ve kind of evolved psychologically to get to this point.”

Addressing Intrinsic Motivators

Employers and managers can use their teams’ intrinsic motivators to help shape their work environments and communications with them to drive engagement and output. However, some motivators are easier to affect than others.

For example, the two motivators that saw an increase in popularity over the last few years: security and financial needs, are hard for individual managers to address.

“I think talking about financial needs, even though I’ve been running companies and stuff, it's never so easy,” said Wahl. “It’s personal, and people have emotional attachments to it.”

However, it’s still possible for companies to address these motivators in the way they offer benefits, their workflows, and their company cultures. For instance, employees motivated by security will feel more motivated when they know what’s expected of them and how a project will play out than they will if there are no standard workflows in place and they’re not so sure of their role.

Ultimately, addressing intrinsic motivators will not be a one-size-fits all application. Everybody’s motivators are different, so companies need to find different ways to address different people’s needs.

“Finding ways to not necessarily get everybody looking the exact same way–not looking for alignment or everybody in the company to have the same motivators–but for ways to be able to tailor your communication as a leadership team so you can understand each other and appreciate the different perspectives people are bringing to their work is increasingly recognized as being really valuable,” said Ayuzawa.

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks its partner, Attuned, for supporting this sponsor spotlight.

Erika Riley is a Maryland-based freelance writer. 

(Featured image by RomoloTavani/iStock by Getty Images)
 

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