Between 46% and 54% of employees in Europe say they are demotivated (France Info). A striking figure that reflects the scale of a subject too long sidelined in organisations. Yet motivation is the primary driver of individual and collective performance: it acts directly on capabilities, the effort deployed and the quality of cooperation within teams. Understanding what builds it, what undermines it and how to sustain it is a concrete management priority, not an abstract question.
Motivation at Work: What Are We Actually Talking About?
Before seeking to act on motivation, a rigorous definition must be established. The concept is more complex than it appears, and its use in the world of work is more recent than is commonly supposed.
A Concept That Developed Gradually
Motivation in the sense we understand it today only entered the language of organisations after the second third of the twentieth century. Before that, the word had simply a legal definition. This late emergence partly explains why motivation remains an insufficiently steered concept in certain organisations, despite its direct impact on performance.
Since then, the work of psychologists and organisational behaviour researchers has progressively laid solid foundations for better understanding and activating this lever.
What Researchers Have Said About It
Vallerand and Thill (1993) provide a reference definition of motivation: "The concept of motivation represents the hypothetical construct used to describe the internal and/or external forces producing the triggering, direction, intensity and persistence of behaviour."
What this definition highlights: motivation is not a fixed state. It can be strong or weak, varies from one individual to another and within the same person according to circumstances. It is triggered by external forces (the situation, the environment, the way of working) or by internal forces (needs, personality, aspirations). Four elements build and dismantle it: the triggering of behaviour, its direction, its intensity and its persistence.
The Major Theories of Motivation: What They Bring to Managers
Several theoretical frameworks have sought to explain the drivers of motivation at work. Four approaches dominate and remain particularly useful for guiding day-to-day management.
Maslow and Alderfer: Needs as the Foundations of Motivation
Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist, arranges human needs in five levels: physiological needs, safety needs, needs for love, social relationships and group belonging, esteem and recognition needs, and finally the needs for self-actualisation, progress and personal fulfilment. Motivation arises from the desire to satisfy these needs in sequence and ceases once one level is reached, resuming at the next.
Clayton Alderfer simplifies this model with his ERG theory. Three fundamental, non-hierarchical needs sustain motivation: Existence needs (E), Relatedness needs (R) and Growth needs (G). Unlike Maslow, Alderfer considers that several of these needs can be active simultaneously, which aligns more closely with the complexity of real professional situations.
Herzberg, Deci and Ryan: Satisfaction, Competence and Autonomy
Frederick Herzberg offers a two-factor reading. He distinguishes the factors of direct satisfaction, encompassing accomplishments, recognition, responsibility and development, from what he calls "hygiene factors": management style, company policy, status and remuneration. The latter do not generate motivation in themselves, but their absence creates dissatisfaction. A useful insight for avoiding the confusion between what genuinely engages and what merely satisfies.
Deci and Ryan, for their part, place autonomy and the sense of competence at the heart of intrinsic motivation. Each employee is driven by the need to feel competent, to develop their capacity to interact with their professional environment and to have genuine freedom of choice in the situations they encounter. These two researchers confirm that granting autonomy is not a management risk: it is a powerful motivation lever.
From Theory to Practice: How to Act on Motivation
Theories provide frameworks. What interests managers and HR teams is their practical translation into day-to-day organisational life.
The Five Levers That Make the Difference
From all of this research, five levers emerge consistently: recognition, well-being at work, autonomy, the interest of the role and responsibilities, and the prospects for personal fulfilment and career development. These dimensions directly correspond to the needs identified by Maslow as the most structurally significant for performance.
For managers, this translates into concrete daily choices: giving meaning to responsibilities, naming successes, offering spaces of autonomy, setting accessible challenges and building visible development prospects for every employee. None of these levers requires considerable budgets. They call above all for regularity, attentiveness and a management posture oriented towards recognition.
Satisfaction Surveys: Measuring in Order to Act More Effectively
To steer motivation effectively, it is necessary to start by measuring it. Regular surveys among employees make it possible to establish their level of satisfaction, identify which levers are working and which deserve to be reinforced. This factual data is the foundation of a motivation policy grounded in operational realities rather than assumptions.
Based on this feedback, concrete mechanisms can be deployed: creating a positive working environment, well-designed incentive programmes that bring together all the actions aimed at rewarding and stimulating engagement, and regular management rituals that give employees clear visibility over their progression. The aim is to build a culture in which motivation is not left to chance, but steered with method and continuity.
