What are the real drivers of human engagement in the workplace?

What are those things that consistently inspire people to fully commit themselves in their jobs and to willingly scale mountains for their superiors and organisations?

For the past two-plus years, I’ve been singularly focused on answering these questions and the true bottom-line. In the service of organisations everywhere, my singular mission has been to identify the few critical leadership practices, that affect people so deeply that they become uncommonly loyal, committed and productive.

To distil all I’ve discovered down to just one word, what workers across the globe need in order to thrive and exceptionally perform in their jobs is love.

The use of the word love is of course a huge taboo in the context of business and management. As you read on, you’ll soon see that the love I’m referring to has nothing to do with romance or religion. The love I’m speaking of relates to the experience of positive emotions–the foundation of human motivation.

We’ve long believed that a job and a paycheck provided sufficient motivation for people to remain fully committed at work. But as levels of engagement have fallen abysmally low all over the world, the evidence is irrefutably clear that people today want and need much more in exchange for their dedicated efforts. Here’s how we know:

Upon all I learned, my conclusions as to what will have the greatest impact on reversing our worldwide engagement crisis, come down to just a few profoundly important revelations. As you might imagine, many of these directly challenge traditional managerial thinking.

We hear a lot about employee perks and are led to believe the more extravagant they are, the better they are in stimulating performance. With the exception of health care and on-site day-care (which make people feel valued), few other perks significantly influence engagement.

While it used to be that people derived their greatest sense of happiness from time spent with family and hobbies, how satisfied workers feel in their jobs now determines their overall happiness with life. This monumental shift means that job fulfilment has become essential to people everywhere.

The decision to be engaged is made in worker’s hearts–not minds. We now know that feelings and emotions drive human behaviour–what people care most about and commit themselves to in their lives. Consequently, how leaders and organisations make people feel in their jobs has the greatest impact on their performance by far.

For centuries, most people went to work to get a paycheck, in order to put a roof over their heads and food on their table. As a driver of engagement, pay now ranks no higher than fifth in importance to people–in every industrialised country. What truly inspires worker engagement in the 21st century, can best be described as “EMOTIONAL currency.” Here’s what that means:

Having a manager that cares about us, our well-being and personal growth without exceptions, managers predominantly concerned about their own needs create the lowest levels of employee engagement. Going forward, having an authentic advocacy for the development and success of others, should be prerequisite for selection into all leadership roles.

Doing work that we enjoy and have the talents to perform, selecting people who display passion for the work they’ll be doing, is perhaps the most important step towards building a highly engaged team. People can’t ever be fully engaged if their hearts aren’t in the work.

Routinely feeling valued appreciated and having a deep belief, that the work we do matters, it’s highly destructive to people to have them strive and achieve and to then have those contributions go unrecognized. Any company focused exclusively on driving profits–without a compelling mission–will inherently neuter engagement.

Feeling connected with and genuinely supported by others at work, is a surprisingly significant driver of engagement and loyalty.