The Secret Ingredient for your Holiday Party
As you gear up for your end-of-the-year holiday party, including one particular ‘secret ingredient’ can ensure your staff feels valued and appreciated. Dinners, themed parties, or cocktail hours can certainly be lots of fun. But to truly inspire and engage your staff, that ingredient to include is taking some time or space to showcase the ways in which your team has lived out your organizational mission and created value throughout the past year.
In a 2019 article published in the Harvard Business Review Magazine, Sally Blount and Paul Leinwand write about employee engagement and the results of a survey of more than 540 employees in a variety of businesses worldwide. The research notes:
At companies that have clearly defined and communicated how [employees] create value, 63% of employees say they’re motivated, versus 31% at other companies; 65% say they’re passionate about their work, versus 32% at other companies.
As the holiday season comes around, it’s easy to get wrapped up in ‘things,’ and there can often be lots of anxiety around selecting and presenting material tokens of gratitude. And while these are certainly nice and often appreciated too, do not underestimate the value of intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is defined as doing an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence.
Intrinsic motivation is a game changer. In the survey just cited, employees, considered the intrinsic motivator of being passionate about their work to be more than twice as important, on average, as traditional motivators such as compensation and career advancement.
And there’s nothing that stokes the fires of passion quite like a reminder of what you’ve accomplished through that passion.
Go beyond a generic ‘thank you for your hard work this year' line in the holiday card. Be specific, and
If organizations want to inspire their workers, they must clearly communicate why they’re in business and what value they provide. When employees understand and embrace those things, their companies thrive.
Yet, in a recent survey of more than 540 employees worldwide conducted by PwC’s strategy consulting business, Strategy&, only 28% of respondents reported feeling fully connected to their company’s purpose. Just 39% said they could see the value they create. A mere 22% agreed that their jobs allow them to fully leverage their strengths, and only 34% thought they strongly contribute to their company’s success. More than half weren’t even “somewhat” motivated, passionate, or excited about their jobs.
In the survey just cited, employees, considered it to be more than twice as important, on average, as traditional motivators such as compensation and career advancement. At companies that have clearly defined and communicated how they create value, 63% of employees say they’re motivated, versus 31% at other companies; 65% say they’re passionate about their work, versus 32% at other companies. And these purpose-driven organizations reap substantial benefits: More than 90% of them deliver growth and profits at or above the industry average, according to Strategy& research, and analyses.
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