Scientists have uncovered the secret to motivating the male workforce, according to research carried out by Leicester University.
Apparently, setting men goals leads to raised productivity, whilst giving them specific targets to work toward helps motivation. Conversely, women performed better than men when they had no goals set. The study looked at 109 participants dividing them up into groups before setting them simple challenges.
Researchers found that men performed better, achieving higher scores, in the groups with goals set, whereas the women had a higher productivity level when they were not set a target.
Samuel Smithers, PhD student from the University of Leicester's Department of Economics explained: “The focus of this research was to determine how to motivate people.
“When we are given a goal, we feel a sense of purpose to achieve it; it naturally helps to focus us. The findings demonstrate that setting a goal induces higher effort. My research found that women perform better than men in the no goal setting, but men thrive in both of the goal treatments.
“[This suggests] men are more responsive to goals than women. I also found a 20% and 35% increase in correct number of additions for the medium and challenging goal groups over the control group.”
With the problems of productivity gaining media attention after the announcement of the Budget yesterday, HR Grapevine looked at how best to boost employee engagement and efficiency.
