The Importance Of Motivation At USAA

USAA defines itself by its dedication to help manage military members’ finances throughout their military career and beyond. (usaa). USAA and its employees are simply already motivated by serving the military community because those in the military have sacrificed so much to serve their country. Serving those in the military gives employees a sense of purpose and doing meaningful work. Motivating employees isn’t that simple though, therefore USAA’s motivational techniques have been analyzed in order to determine what areas the company is succeeding in and what areas need improvement.

According to Fred Herzberg, eighty percent of motivation comes from “motivating factors”, such as recognition, responsibility, learning opportunities and meaningful work. (Guinn, S. L., 2013). When USAA call center employees were surveyed, the top motivating factor was interesting work. USAA lacks in this area merely because research has shown that call center representatives have limited task control, limited control over the timing in which they have to answer calls and are faced with routine tasks that become monotonous for the

When employees were asked, what factors could be changed at USAA to help maintain employee motivation levels, a couple of them answered with, “higher wages” and “more money”. This response corroborates other studies regarding pay which state surveys will more likely under emphasize the importance of pay relative to other motivational factors. (Rynes, Gerhart & Minette, 2004). “Financial incentives had by far the largest effect on productivity of all interventions. For example, pay was four times more effective than interventions designed to make work more interesting.” (Rynes, 2004). One reason for this phenomenon is social desirable responding. It should be noted, that although pay may be under reported, the results indicate other factors are also important for employee