Continuous change communication and employee motivation
Somppi, Annaleena (2020)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202003213734
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202003213734
Tiivistelmä
Martela & Jarenko (2015)’s book about intrinsic motivation was the start for this thesis. The book made me think of how to combine intrinsic motivation and communication. Change communication is an interesting and relevant topic and I wanted to process it, but not in the traditional way. I think that today’s change communication is happening on a daily basis and it has continuity. The main research question was how to communicate continuous changes in order to keep employees motivated and it was concentrated on literature review.
The literature review consisted of two parts: change communication and motivation. Major changes are familiar to many and there are management guidelines and psychological studies on how to lead and communicate big changes. But what about continuous change. Change chapter explained basic change communication theories and strategies. Motivation chapter focused on intrinsic motivation: what is it and how it is useful to organizations. This chapter explained Martela & Jarenko (2015)’s motivation diamond and its four categories: the need of capacity, the need of voluntary, the need of social cohesion and the need of social cohesion.
The study was executed as a quantitative study through web survey. It was executed during spring 2019 and it received 319 answers. The group of respondents were change positive due to their work and them being highly interested in communication. It can be stated that this was not an average group of knowledge workers but, on the other hand, the group that should be kept in organizations as they could act as change ambassadors. The above mentioned four categories were used as a base for some question’ options. After the data was analyzed, five guidelines was created for continuous change communication. These guidelines were validated with a small group of communication professionals and outcomes were written out.
Even today, most of the respondents were longing face-to-face communication, whether it was related to change communication, internal communication or hearing that their work is meaningful. This, a clear content and a dialogue were most expected from change communication. However, f2f communication might be difficult to organize in all organizations due to resources: people, time and money. Therefore, it is important to have interactive communication tool where feedback can be gathered and presents two-way communication even though it is not done f2f.
The literature review consisted of two parts: change communication and motivation. Major changes are familiar to many and there are management guidelines and psychological studies on how to lead and communicate big changes. But what about continuous change. Change chapter explained basic change communication theories and strategies. Motivation chapter focused on intrinsic motivation: what is it and how it is useful to organizations. This chapter explained Martela & Jarenko (2015)’s motivation diamond and its four categories: the need of capacity, the need of voluntary, the need of social cohesion and the need of social cohesion.
The study was executed as a quantitative study through web survey. It was executed during spring 2019 and it received 319 answers. The group of respondents were change positive due to their work and them being highly interested in communication. It can be stated that this was not an average group of knowledge workers but, on the other hand, the group that should be kept in organizations as they could act as change ambassadors. The above mentioned four categories were used as a base for some question’ options. After the data was analyzed, five guidelines was created for continuous change communication. These guidelines were validated with a small group of communication professionals and outcomes were written out.
Even today, most of the respondents were longing face-to-face communication, whether it was related to change communication, internal communication or hearing that their work is meaningful. This, a clear content and a dialogue were most expected from change communication. However, f2f communication might be difficult to organize in all organizations due to resources: people, time and money. Therefore, it is important to have interactive communication tool where feedback can be gathered and presents two-way communication even though it is not done f2f.