Fair treatment by employees and new challenges are most important to employees

Capital Incentives & Motivation survey finds employees:
- ’looking for new challenges’ and ’better career progress’ are main reasons for changing job

- are primarily motivated by being treated fairly at work

- would prefer flexible working hours over any other benefit

- say only 22% of them had exit interview when leaving last job These insights are among the findings of the fifth annual motivation survey published by Capital Incentives & Motivation, the leading incentive and motivation specialists.

Reasons for moving on
The most common reason for leaving their last job was ’looking for a new challenge,’ given by 27% of respondents, with 19% stating that there were few opportunities for career progression in their current role, and 15% declaring that they ’did not enjoy the work.’ Yet, in what seems like a missed opportunity on the part of employers to establish reasons for leaving and take steps to improve employee retention, only 22% of respondents indicated that they had an exit interview when they left their last job.

Graham Povey, Managing Director of Capital Incentives & Motivation said: The majority of UK employees seem happy in their role and those that are not are moving on for well thought-out reasons; to look for a new challenge and enhance their career, rather than a simple increase in salary.

Fair treatment remains top motivating factor
For the fifth year running, ’being fairly treated’ has proved to be the primary motivating factor for people at work, with 75% of people rating it as very important. Over the last twelve months, however, ’good pay/current salary’ has moved up from third into second place with 56% of respondents now rating it as very important, while ’having good relationships with colleagues’ has fallen in importance since 2004 when 69% of participants rated it very important. In 2005 this had dropped into third place with 54%.

In addition, the 2005 survey asked participants to rate the importance of a number of new factors, which have a potential impact on motivation at work. ’Good promotion prospects’ were rated as very important by 38% of respondents, ’fair workload’ by 29%, and both ’fair time pressures’ and ’good policy regulation/discussion’ by 24%.

Reward and incentive schemes on the increase The results of the survey also show that the number of employers running reward and incentive schemes has continued to rise from 68% to 73%, although the level of consultation with employees on the type of incentive to offer has remained fairly static with only a slight increase from 22% in 2004 to 25% in 2005.

Flexible working hours the most sought after benefit When asked which benefit would be first choice when choosing the ideal job package, ’flexible working hours’ was the overwhelming favourite with 29% of the vote, with the next most popular perk being a car (17%), followed by an extra week’s leave and pension (both 15%)

Graham Povey continues, The 2005 survey has shown some interesting insights into the use of incentive and reward schemes in the UK today. It is no surprise that ’being treated fairly’ has remained the top motivating factor as no-one likes to feel under-valued and being respected at work is what we all desire. It will be interesting to track the ratings of the new factors we surveyed, such as the importance of fair time pressures and good promotion prospects, over the coming twelve months.