Why is it that some of us are excited about Monday Mornings while some of us dread Monday Mornings from Sunday evenings itself? Why is that some of us can’t think of building careers across organizations and stay committed for life to one organization while some of us start longing for something else in our workplace as soon as a few months pass by? Why is that some of us can’t stop talking about the fun we are having in our jobs while some others shy from referring to what we do?

The answers aren’t simple to come but it would not be exactly wrong to extrapolate and come to a conclusion that some of the bright people at our workplace are motivated to build their lives around the organizations they work for. In short they have evolved from seeing their contributions from jobs to careers.

So, does the Key lie in ‘Motivation’ / ‘Rewards’ or something else and therefore, what’s next in this stage of evolution. At the NHRD National Conference, Sri Sri Ravishankar shared a interesting insight on the difference between motivation & inspiration and there probably lies the key. . .

Motivation or Rewards have been successful for years and have yielded results most of the times in making the workforce more productive and building a sense of ownership. The flip side of motivation has been that the ‘charm’ or ‘effectiveness’ is often limited to a time period and post that period the impact starts falling. So why is that . . . and how do we overcome this challenge.

Motivation or Rewards are an external stimuli and do not arouse any internal appetite towards a goal while Inspiration is something which does this wonderfully. When inspired the workforces don’t need any artificial or external intervention, they are self motivated and driven to achieve the desired goals. The next orbit for HR professionals and People Champions is how do we transit this journey from Motivation to Inspiration

At The Strategist we believe Inspiration in workforce is a long term and effective tool which not enables in building a positive workforce but also a workforce which contributes more and stays longer thereby building a legacy and productive work environment.

Inspiration in workforce can be inculcated through various mechanisms; the primary of that being sharing the big picture and creating a sense of PURPOSE in the employees. Secondly ensuring that the there is an alignment in the purpose of employee and organization and most critical being fading out employees who display a disconnect to the ideology . . .

The journey from Motivation to Inspiration is surely not a simple one, neither is it going to be possible to cover large organizations but the first steps could be ensuring that Leadership Team and Talent Pipeline are in sync and this would be a great beginning…