“Money Makes the World go Round”, “Money Changes Everything”, Money (That’s What I Want)”, “Mo Money, Mo Problems”, “Money, Money, Money”. It seems there are songs about money, shows about money and how to make it, a chance to win it and even movies about how to steal it. So if it is about money and making it what else motivates a person in the workplace? Let’s face it not everyone works the job they want and certainly we don’t make the money we thought we would be making. Look up your job title on Google and you are bound to get various amounts from way under what you make to $5,000 to $10,000 more than you make.
In the video, Andy Muholland talks about three motivators:
Interesting work- Expanding the skill set
- Recognize me…value me for what I can do, how I can work for you
How do these factors motivate me? Interesting work is for me a must in my job. Just like a book or class or activity it has to hold my interest or I will not be motivated to read the book, take the class or join in an activity. What makes my work interesting is that though the basis of the job is the same (helping the student with their financial aid) it goes beyond that. I have to know various federal regulations and how they apply to financial aid, websites such as Common Origination and Disbursement (COD), National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), and FAFSA on the Web (FOTW) well enough to navigate through them, understand them and use them on a daily basis.
I enjoy talking to students and helping them realize their dreams of a great education. I get to interact with people from all over the world from soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to students living in London and even California. Knowing that I am making a difference in someone else’s life means a lot to me. Another aspect of my work that makes it interesting is that I get to travel to our operations center in Killeen, Texas to train our level one agents on basic financial aid and using our systems (Datatel and CS). They are engaged in learning and ask a lot of questions. When a trainee comes up to me afterwards and tells me that my training was best training session she has been to because I made something boring fun and interesting it makes my job even more fulfilling.
Expanding the skill set is another area I thrive in. I don’t want to do the same thing every day for the next 25 years. At worldwide headquarters, there are employees who have been in the same position doing the exact same thing for 25 years. There is nothing wrong with that but for me I want to learn all aspects of a job. I started as a counselor and within six months was asking for more work. Not because I was bored but because I wanted to learn more. Like a puzzle, I want to know where all the pieces fit in. How does one part affect the others? Once I became the online counselor (I was the central regions counselor with about 700 students) I took on about 1700 students. I had to learn to manage my time better as well as a new track for which students took class.
When worldwide took over the process for verifications (verifying information a student puts on their FAFSA) I really enjoyed how it worked and wanted to learn more. I went to my director and expressed a desire to learn more about this process. At that time he was planning on opening another position for a manager of loans and verifications. He asked me if I was interested because again I had expressed my interest in learning more areas in financial aid. He felt that I would be great in the position but that it would be challenging. He expressed his confidence in me which was great.
This leads me to the third and according to Andy Muholland, the most critical of the three motivators, Recognize me. My director values what I can do and how I can work for him. He sees that I always want to learn more and understand how everything works. I am a people pleaser at heart so when he says “you did a great job on the manual” I know he means it. He makes me think and understand how to do things better. I know that I can count him to mentor me and make me a great leader.
Another motivator for me is flexibility in the work place. I have worked for different companies where if you needed time off to go to a doctor’s appointment you better be dying. I work for a company now that recognizes that life doesn’t revolve around work and that there are more important things in life like family. I know that if I need to take an extra half an hour at lunch time to see my daughter receive an award I can do that. When we go to 4 day work weeks I have to take shorter lunches because my daughter will still be in school so my boss makes arrangements for me to be able to pick her up before the school closes for the day (she is in an after school program). It is these little things that make working there great.
Ability to grow in the company is another motivator for me. I want to know that I can move up in my organization without having to leave the company. I used to work in the flight department at the Daytona Beach campus and tried a few times for different positions within the flight department. My bosses boss told me that I could apply but that I wouldn’t get it because I was too valuable in my position I held at that point. He said that the students and team managers relied on me too much for me to move into a different position, that no one knew the things I did. I knew at that point that I was getting burnt out and that I would never move up in that department. On an average day I would see around 200 students in my office. They would wait for me outside the classroom so they could speak to me. It was crazy! There was a joke around campus that if you wanted to know something you “ask Anna” she would know the answer. Funny thing is that this saying has followed me to my current position as well.
The last factor for me is a great working environment. If you have a great job but a bad working environment it doesn’t make it worthwhile. I work with a great team and even though we can get on each other’s nerves from time to time we all work well together. We are a cohesive group and we look out for each other and jump in to help each other even if we are super busy. Right now our Eastern region counselor is out on maternity leave (Leigh Ann) so we are all working different parts of her region.
When she was getting everything ready for while she was out our boss said he would work her region. I knew that though he could do it he was in no position to be able to do it well because of all the other demands on him (he was getting Veteran Affairs ready for Worldwide) so I got everyone together and asked everyone to pick from her daily functions to work until Leigh Ann came back. We split it up and I went to my director and told him we had it under control. He told us in our last meeting that he is pleased with the fact that we do these kinds of things without him even asking us do. The way I look at it is I am going to spend 8 hours of my day with my work family so it better be a good environment to work in otherwise it makes that 8 hour day a very long one.
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