Research has shown that compensation does have an effect on employee motivation and behavior. Proper compensation gives employees the job satisfaction they want and need, and it also incentivizes employees to do better and get better results. But not having proper compensation can have the opposite effect and cause employees to decrease effort, which is what I did in a previous position.

I was previously a medical assistant for a hospital and was assigned to work at a COVID testing site. I worked at this testing site for 6 months and was the senior emplpoyee at this site, meaning I was considered the lead/supervisor. On paper, working at a testing site was an easy job since you only swabbed patients, but in reality, it was very taxing. We swabbed rougly 250-350 patients per day, which was about one patient every 1-2 minutes. With the high patient load, we were moving nonstop and hardly received breaks. We worked in every weather condition, delt with difficult, angry, and sometimes dangerous patients, and the ever-changing policies/guidelines by the hospital and CDC.

In order to get their medical assistant back into their home departments, the hospital decided to hire temporary medical assistants through recruiting agencies to work in the COVID testing sites. Since I was the senior employee, I trained the new temps and was supposed to work alongsite them until I was released back to my home department. The problem with this though was that the temps made twice or more money as I did, performing the exact same duties as me.

Throughout the 6 months before the temps, myself and the other medical assistants working at the site requested additional hazard pay or compensation from the hospital for the work we were doing, but we never received any. So, when the temps came in making twice as much money as me, my motivation quickly declined. I provided them with the training that they needed to perform their duties and then I saw around and supervised them for the rest of my time at the testing site.

This unfortauntely is an example of how motivation can be lowered with improper compensation. I would have continued putting in effort if I was making the same wage as the temp employees, but I didn’t feel very valued by the organization after requesting a higher pay for months, which led to a decrease in my effort and motivation.