The EFQM-model and work motivation

Abstract

Job satisfaction and work motivation are result criteria of the EFQM-Model for Excellence. Looking at the organizational practice, one can however see that normally organizations are using instruments measuring job satisfaction to receive information about how their employees feel about important work-related aspects of their work. Very rarely do they use instruments with which they get information about how their employees judge their organization with respect to motivational aspects of their workplace. This is fairly surprising, as several studies have shown that satisfied employees are not automatically the ones who show higher performance. Employees have to be highly motivated too. One reason for the dominance of instruments measuring job satisfaction is due to the fact that there is only one instrument that explicitly claims that it measures work motivation potentials at work: The Job Diagnostic Survey. Analysing this instrument one can critically see that its focus is only the work-content of an employee. Motivation potentials beyond the work-content (or the work-task itself) are not considered. Therefore, an additional instrument is needed, including further aspects of motivation. Based on an expectancy-value approach, an instrument has been developed that contains the motivation potentials of the JDS and adds to it six new motivation potentials. It is called: Motivation Assessment Questionnaire. The usefulness of this new questionnaire in the context of the EFQM-Model is described in this paper. It shows, that measures (stated in criteria 3) like work-design, differential work-design, performance-oriented incentive systems, cafeteria-systems, management of responsibilities and policy deployment can now be assessed in respect of their amount of effectiveness in the perception of motivation potentials in criteria 7. Therefore the MAQ helps to show relationships between measures in criteria 3 and (motivational) results in criteria 7. This is, until today, a major criticism of the EFQM-Model, because it does not say which precise organisational measures in criteria 3 do lead to which better results regarding motivation in criteria 7.