Why Employee Motivation is Fueled by Progress

Employee motivation is often misunderstood inside the workplace.

The results are easy to spot, but the factors (aside from money, of course) that contribute to positive or negative motivation are less clear. Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School professor and coauthor of “The Progress Principle,” details some of the factors that shape employee motivation in this video.

She asserts that there is cumulative power in what she described as “small wins.” Sometimes, she explains, even small on-the-job accomplishments can become great positive motivators for employees. Although they may seem trivial to the naked eye, they can have an individual or cumulative impact on an employee.

Highly-motivated employees, one can then conclude, need to be surrounded by opportunities for small wins in order to have a positive work life. For more on this topic, watch the video featuring Amabile.