Money Not The Top Motivator

If you are a leader in an organization and have to hire people you might be surprised by the results of our recent survey.

We asked people in our network (primarily not for profit and social enterprise) what was most important to them when looking at their next job opportunity.

The choices were: mission of the organization; job responsibilities; supervisor; career path; and salary.

Only 3% of people picked salary as their most important factor in making a career transition.

As a recruiter, I would have thought this would have been a higher number, especially since the salary expectations in the not for profit sector and especially for fundraising professionals who’s salary’s seem to be climbing rapidly.

Maybe it’s not as important as we think.

The top two most important things, both at 34%, for individuals looking to take that next step was mission of the organization and job responsibilities.

As a recruiter and coach, the question I would ask organizational leaders trying to hire and retain the right staff is “how well are you capitalizing on these two non-monetary opportunities?”

Let’s take the mission of the organization.

Are you continuing to keep your staff, at all levels of the organization, closely tied to your mission?

• Is it part of your organizational strategy to keep your staff closely aligned with the importance of the work you do everyday?
• Or do you inspire new employees when you hire then and then assume they will continue to understand the impact of the good work you do?
• Do you spend as much time sharing the good stories with your staff as you do the donors of your organization?

What about job responsibilities?

Although I wasn’t able to ask survey takers why they thought job responsibilities was so important, I’m going to take a leap here, based on thousands of conversations over the years, and give you my interpretations.

Job responsibilities define what an employee does every day, all day.

When job responsibilities align with the employees talents and skills and motivations you can be assured you have a motivated and energized staff.

So if you are a supervisor, here are a few questions you can ask?

• Do the activities of the job challenge and motivate my employee to do their best?
• Are they the activities the employee actually wants to be doing each day?
• Are there slight tweaks that can be done to give an employee more of what they want?
• How do the job responsibilities of your employee line up with their career path and what they would like to be doing next?
• Have I checked in recently to ask if the job responsibilities they have been assigned are still activities that motivate them to stay in the job and at the organization?
• The good news about the survey is that there are other ways to compete with larger and richer organizations that isn’t just about money.

If you have a different view point or additional comments regarding the survey results feel free to share your comments.

Sandra Paquette