Tucked into the book is the story of Tandem Computers, an early computer company that is now a division of Hewlett-Packard. The company had an interesting policy about salary negotiations – it didn’t. Companywide, salary was not discussed with potential new hires until after they’d accepted the offer. Even at the most senior levels, potential hires were told that the company paid a competitive salary and offered a competitive benefits package.

Those that insisted on knowing the salary before accepting the offer quickly found their offer withdrawn. The philosophy behind this policy is simple: if people come for the money, they will leave for the money. However, if they joined because they like the company, found the work meaningful and enjoyed the culture, then they would be more likely to stay and make a long-term contribution.

There’s a growing body of research suggesting that incentives like bonuses and commissions may not be as useful in knowledge work – the notion being that employees would focus too much on the bonus and not enough on the job. The Tandem example seems to take this further; suggesting that when salary is open for discussion it becomes a far bigger issue than it ought to be for someone intrinsically motivated to do the work.

Tandem Computers is a near-apocryphal case of how this philosophy plays out, however, I’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for similar examples.

David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab. He speaks, consults and serves on the faculty of management at Oral Roberts University’s College of Business.

In this interview, we discuss her latest research project, chronicled in her new book The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. The book, based on research into nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from over 200 professionals inside organizations, illuminates how everyday events at work can impact employee engagement and creative productivity

I spent five years in the pharmaceutical industry, and had the chance to talk to many GSK representatives when the measures were announced. Most believed it was just a public relations stunt to try and present themselves as the “good guys” in pharmaceutical marketing – focused solely on customer needs. However, I’m not convinced that’s the lone reason.

There’s research that backs up their decision.

Victory Vroom first argued that incentives work only when several conditions are met, one of them being a belief that extra effort will actually increase the measurement of performance. In the case of pharmaceutical sales, I’m not convinced this has been the case for a while. In today’s industry, most sales representatives serve on a team that shares a territory or list of physicians. In addition, numerous factors outside the representative-physician interaction affect the actual movement of product (e.g. insurance formulary, pharmacists inventory, patient preference, DTC advertising).

With all these factors, it is likely that individual representatives efforts explain only a small percentage of the product’s movement. So bonuses based solely on this movement are likely to have little motivating effort. GSK’s new bonus system is a little closer to, for lack of a better term, evidence-based motivation. It’s an important first step toward aligning bonus metrics with the actual demands of the role. We’ll see how many other companies follow GSK’s lead.

[On a related note, before they sold their pharmaceutical division, Proctor & Gamble eliminated bonuses all together, favoring a higher base salary and using sales data for individual contests.]

David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab. He speaks, consults and serves on the faculty of management at Oral Roberts University’s College of Business.

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The idea that creative expression is a motivational drive is powerful – but it may be incomplete.

Nitin Nohria Boris Groysberg and Linda-Eling Lee outline another model of motivation in a 2008 Harvard Business Review article aptly titled “Employee Motivation.” Their thesis is similar to Deci (and hence Pink’s) in that it acknowledges traditional reward systems but then transcends them. However, they offer FOUR drives that motivate individuals to contribute in organizations: Acquire, Bond, Comprehend (similar to Pink’s idea of mastery) and Defend.

Nohria, Groysberg and Lee go further by outlining four levers that organizations can utilize to get the most out of their people: Reward systems, culture, job design and performance-management processes.

Both the Deci-Pink model and the Four-Drives model share a common and vital lesson for organizational leaders: if you want the most from your people, you have to do more than just pay them to show up.

How the boss treats her employees clearly affects their engagement. But a new study of 428 employees published in the Journal of Business Ethics found that how the company behaves also matters.  The author measured engagement as an effect with a very valid and reliable set of questions. I think that is very important and unfortunately also rare. This study found two other factors that influenced employee engagement – organizational trust and perceived corporate citizenship. The author concludes that “it is important to keep in mind that work engagement is not just purely driven by employees’ personal needs but also by the social needs accomplished by the organization.” (p. 528).

This makes a lot of sense to me. I personally could never contribute my whole head and heart to my work if I had an extremely lousy boss. But even if I had a great immediate supervisor, I probably could not be fully engaged if I did not trust the organization I worked for or felt it was socially irresponsible.

I think it’s harder to find a good boss in a bad organization. If you find yourself working for a bad boss in a good organization and you like the work that you do, my advice is to hang in there if you can. Bad bosses come and go, but truly good and trustworthy organizations are worthy of our engagement.

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Related Posts At Positive Organizational Behavior:

Personality And Employee Engagement

Engagement Soup

Shrodinger’s Engagement

Are We Engaged Yet?

Money Is Not The Best Motivator – Forbes.com Article