Employee motivation: why the UK lags, and what actually drives it

A recent study showed that just 60% of employees in the UK said they were motivated to work beyond their usual duties, compared with 71% in the other markets surveyed. This was the lowest figure among all the geographical areas examined, with India scoring 84% and the United States 75%.

The same research found motivation is not evenly distributed inside organisations either. Among individual contributors with no management responsibility, only 57% said they were motivated to do more than their job requires, against 81% of CEOs.

When looking for a solution, the answer is close to unanimous: recognition and rewards. The approach isn't wrong, but it confuses two different things, and for the UK it is aimed at the wrong problem.

What is employee motivation?

Employee motivation is the energy, commitment and discretionary effort a person brings to their work. Discretionary effort is the operative part. It is the difference between doing the job and doing more than the job requires.

Motivation is not the same as ability, and it is not the same as satisfaction. An employee can be capable and idle, or content and coasting.

Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

Motivation comes from two main sources. Each type works differently and responds to different approaches.

Intrinsic motivation comes from the work itself. A person might find a company problem interesting, feel proud of doing it well, believe it matters, or have enough control over the process to feel ownership of the result. This kind of motivation grows slowly, usually over months, and depends a lot on job design—what the role includes, how much freedom it offers, and whether the person can see the impact of their work.

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the work, such as pay, bonuses, recognition, promotions, or avoiding negative consequences. It works quickly, which is why managers under pressure often prefer it, and it is almost always controlled by the employer. Because it is both fast and easy to manage, most organizations use it first.

The main difference is how long each type lasts. Extrinsic rewards work at first but lose their effect over time, and getting the same result again usually means offering a bigger reward. Intrinsic motivation lasts longer, but it cannot be created on a set schedule. Research also shows that adding a reward to something someone already enjoys can actually make them less interested, because they start to see the activity as something they do just for the reward.

Both types of motivation are important, and it helps to see them as working together, not in opposition. Use extrinsic motivators when you need something done quickly. Intrinsic motivators are what make people go above and beyond over the long term. To put it simply, extrinsic rewards are good for getting compliance, but they are not very effective for building real commitment.

For HR teams, the key is to figure out which type of motivation fits the problem. If you need a quick boost before a deadline, use extrinsic motivators. But if your team is consistently putting in minimal effort, that is not an extrinsic problem. Using extrinsic rewards in that case might give you a short-term lift, but you will likely face the same issue again in six months, and it will cost more.

Employee motivation vs employee engagement

People often use these terms as if they mean the same thing at work. But they are different, and mixing them up can lead to surveys that measure one while interventions target the other.

Engagement is a state, while motivation is a force. Engagement is about how absorbed and enthusiastic someone feels in their job, like whether they find the work interesting, if time seems to fly by, or if they feel connected to what they do. Motivation is about what drives someone to put in effort, especially if they are willing to do more than what their job officially asks.

The distinction becomes obvious in the cases where the two come apart, and those cases are common. An employee can be highly engaged and barely motivated: absorbed in the work, genuinely interested, and too depleted to give it any more than the minimum. 

For example, around half of UK workers feel enthusiastic and immersed while only a third feel full of energy describes exactly that population. The reverse also happens. Someone can be working hard, hitting every target and quietly interviewing elsewhere — motivated by circumstance or professional pride, entirely disengaged from the organisation.

Engagement also changes more slowly. It shows a relationship with the work that develops over time, so annual surveys can usually measure it well. Motivation, on the other hand, can change quickly with workload, a new manager, or a reorganization, so an annual survey will miss most changes in motivation.

The CIPD, in its employee engagement factsheet, treats engagement as a psychological state and warns it should be kept distinct from job quality, employee behaviour and management action. Also, the research linking engagement to performance shows correlation, not causation. Every "engaged companies are X% more profitable" claim rests on that qualification.

How motivated are UK employees?

UK employees are less motivated than many of their international peers, and the reasons behind this might surprise employers.

Korn Ferry found that motivation among UK employees is at 60%, while the average across other markets is 71%. This is the lowest score in the study. What matters most are the reasons behind this number. The UK lags most in learning and development, using skills, and trust in senior leadership, each about twelve points below the average. Only 53% of UK employees think their company values people more than profits. These problems are not about pay or perks, and employee benefits alone cannot fix them.

The results are even more worrying when you look at motivation by job level instead of by country. Motivation is 82% for senior executives and 81% for CEOs, but it falls to 77% for managers, 73% for middle managers, and only 57% for employees without management roles. Consultancy.uk, using the same research, found that 42% of employees would leave their job because of low pay. This shows that those with the least power are the least motivated, the most financially at risk, and the ones who hear the most about company purpose.

CIPD's Good Work Index offers a different view and finds results that seem to clash unless you separate motivation from engagement. About half of UK workers say they feel enthusiastic and involved in their jobs, but only a third feel energetic at work. Around one in five feel exhausted or under too much pressure, and about 15% feel lonely, unhappy, or bored. Most British employees are not disconnected from their work. Instead, they do not have the resources they need.

The eight findings that matter most

• UK motivation is at 60%, compared to a 71% average across the markets Korn Ferry surveyed. This is the lowest score of any country in the study.
• Only 57% of individual contributors feel motivated to do more, compared to 81% of CEOs. The gap between job levels within organisations is bigger than the gap between countries.
• The three biggest gaps in the UK are in development (59% vs 71%), using skills (66% vs 76%), and trust in leadership (59% vs 71%). All of these are important motivators.
• When the least motivated group was asked what was missing, they mentioned a lack of development, not enough camaraderie, and worry about being replaced by AI. They did not say they lacked recognition or perks.
• Only one third of UK workers feel energetic at work, while about half say they feel enthusiastic and involved. Engagement and motivation are no longer the same.
• A third of UK workers say it is getting harder to stay motivated. This group scores 48.6 on the Mental Health Index, which is sixteen points below the national average and falls into the distressed range.
• Pay does not motivate workers, but not having enough pay makes them less motivated-
• When asked what would make work more fulfilling, 34% of employees chose better work-life balance, while only 19% picked recognition.

Regarding the Korn Ferry figures: the survey involved 10,000 professionals from six markets—the USA, the UK, Brazil, the Middle East, Australia and India—and was carried out in March and April 2024. The 'global average' refers to the average of the six markets, not to a global sample, and 'lowest of any geography' means it is the lowest among the six.

It is also a figure from 2024; the Korn Ferry Workforce 2025 report, which came out the following April, surveyed over 15,000 professionals in ten different markets, though it does not provide motivation data broken down by country. Since the 60% figure is therefore the most up-to-date measurement specifically for the UK rather than just the most recent one that has been published, it should be cited as a 2024 figure and that will be accurate.

What actually drives employee motivation?

With so many ways employers can invest their time and money, which actions really boost motivation? The most trusted answer comes from self-determination theory, created by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. This theory is now the leading approach in motivation research.

This theory says motivation is not something you give to someone. Instead, it appears when three psychological needs are met, and it fades when those needs are not fulfilled.

Autonomy means having real control over how you do your work. It is not about choosing the job itself, but about deciding the method, order, and speed of your tasks. If an employee just follows a script written by someone else, they do not have autonomy, even if they picked the job themselves.

Relatedness is about feeling connected to your coworkers. It means having colleagues you would help without being asked, a manager who understands what is happening in your life, and feeling like you are part of a team instead of just working alongside others.

Competence is the feeling that you are effective at your job. It comes from using your real skills, improving them, and seeing that your work leads to results. Many workplace tips focus on this need, but it is often more complex than it seems.

So, what motivates employees right now?

Self-determination theory explains how motivation works, but not what shapes it. Those conditions have changed. Right now, five factors affect motivation in the UK that either didn't exist or weren't as strong five years ago.

Financial pressure has put pay back in play

For most of the last decade the received wisdom was that pay had been displaced by purpose and flexibility. The cost-of-living period reversed that. Almost 70% of workers concerned that the cost of living is outpacing their salary, and 35% believing they are paid below the value of their skills. Pay now leads both the list of reasons people join a company and the list of reasons they leave.

Inadequate pay causes dissatisfaction, adequate pay simply removes it. What has changed is not that money became motivating. It is that a large share of the workforce moved from the adequate side of that line to the inadequate side, and while they are there, nothing else lands. Purpose does not compete with rent.

AI has introduced a new demotivator

This is the newest of the five and the least addressed in existing employer content. When Korn Ferry asked its least motivated group what was wrong, anxiety about being replaced by AI came up alongside development and camaraderie.

In fact, 26% of UK workers worry their job will change because of their company's use of AI and 11% worry it will be eliminated. 

There is also a perception gap that makes it worse. Almost 8 out of every 10 leaders believe they have AI figured out, against 39% of workers who agree. UK "AI optimism" sits at 53%, among the lowest of the markets surveyed. A workforce that is anxious about AI, under-trained on it, and managed by people who think the problem is solved is not a workforce that will volunteer discretionary effort.

Cutting management layers has taken away direction and chances to move up

41% of employees mentioned their organisation had cut management layers. Meanwhile, 43% say leaders are no longer aligned, and 37% say the absence of managers has left them feeling directionless.

This hits motivation twice. It removes the person most likely to notice and respond to an individual's effort, and it removes the visible next step. Both are motivators — recognition and advancement — deleted as a cost-saving measure without anyone deciding they were expendable.

The seniority data shows where the damage lands. Motivation runs at 81% among CEOs and 82% among senior executives, but only 57% among individual contributors with no management responsibility. The further someone sits from the decisions, the less motivated they are.

The gap in autonomy has grown

Return-to-office mandates have moved control over working arrangements back towards employers at exactly the point when autonomy is one of the two drivers with solid evidence behind it.

The gap in the UK is clear: 52% of employees work full-time in the office, but only 17.3% want to, and 49.5% would rather have a hybrid setup. This isn't a small difference. Most people working in the office didn't choose it.

Recovery now limits everything else

Motivation needs extra energy, but many UK workers don't have it. 

Ninety-one percent of UK employees reported burnout symptoms in the past year, and only one third feel full of energy at work. No wonder why more than 30% of UK workers say it's getting harder to stay motivated, and that group has a mental health score of 48.6, which is sixteen points below the national average and in the distressed range.

That number is important because it changes how we see the issue. For a third of the workforce, motivation isn't a management problem that can be fixed with better goals or more recognition. It's a problem of capacity. There is nothing left to motivate.

When asked what would most improve their sense of fulfillment at work, 34% of employees said better work-life balance, almost twice as many as the 19% who said recognition. This is what drives motivation now, and it's not what the market is promoting.

Motivation in the workplace: what employers can change

Many leaders still use traditional ways to motivate their teams, like offering bonuses, rewards for good performance, extra perks, or even using the threat of negative consequences. These methods can work in the short term, but they usually do not help build lasting commitment or satisfaction.

Don't rely only on salary

Fair, transparent, market-aligned salary removes a reason to leave. It does not make anyone go beyond their role. 

The practical implication is a budgeting one. Treat competitive pay as insurance rather than as a motivation programme, and do not expect a rise to produce a lasting change in discretionary effort — it will produce a short one.

Transparency does more work here than the number itself. Perceived pay inequity is a strong demotivator, and perception is shaped by whether people understand how pay is set. A defensible, explained structure at the market rate will outperform a slightly higher but opaque one.

The corollary is the one most organisations get wrong: if pay is genuinely inadequate, nothing further down this list will land. Purpose does not compete with rent.

Make sure people know what is expected, and why

It is the least expensive of the interventions listed and at the same time the most commonly omitted, since each organisation believes that it has already carried it out.

The evidence contradicts this. In the research that BlessingWhite carried out for Engage for Success, 20% of the respondents—almost one third of the disengaged workers—said that greater clarity regarding what the organisation wanted them to do and why would be the one thing that would have the greatest effect on their performance; it was the most common answer. Not more money, not more recognition. Knowing what the job is.

Clarity consists of two elements. The reason for something being done is generally recorded somewhere, but rarely explained, and it is precisely that explanation that leads to motivation rather than compliance. When a finance clerk is asked to reduce the time taken to process invoices by two days, he is given a target. But when the clerk is told this will improve cash flow enough to fund a project the company has been waiting on, he is given a reason.

Wherever possible, get people involved in setting the goals; in this way the goals will be ones that the person has helped to set and thus will have a sense of ownership, whereas the goals which were set down by someone else do not lead to such ownership, and the discussion brings to light obstacles that the person who set the original target was not aware of.

Use the skills you hired

Globally, 76% of employees feel their jobs make good use of their skills and abilities, but in the UK, only 66% feel this way. Line managers can address this gap without extra cost.

The skills needed on the job are not always the same as those taught in training. Development helps people grow, but using their existing skills is just as important. If employees do not use their strengths, they may feel unmotivated, even with plenty of training.

A simple audit, which is rarely done, can help. For each person, find out what they do well and how much of their week they spend using those skills. Often, tasks are assigned based on who is available instead of who is best suited for the job. Over time, this can go unnoticed unless someone checks for it.

This process often reveals tasks that could be given to someone who would enjoy them, instead of someone who finds them dull. It also uncovers skills that managers did not know about because they were not needed in the person’s original role.

Give people somewhere to go

Skills utilisation is about how someone uses their abilities in their current job. Progression is about whether they can see a next step. When people do not see a path forward, their motivation slowly fades, even though this rarely comes up as the reason in exit interviews.

In the UK, only 59% feel they have good opportunities for learning and development, compared to 71% globally. 

If there is no real chance for promotion, be honest and offer other options instead of leaving people to guess. These could include moving into different roles, taking on challenging projects, building mentoring relationships, or formally recognising expertise without requiring people to become managers. What really hurts motivation is not having a flat structure, but pretending it is a career ladder.

Give people control over how the work gets done

Autonomy is one of the two main drivers of motivation, with strong support from both research and real-world experience. However, UK employers have actually made less progress on this front.

Location is the most obvious aspect of autonomy, but it matters least. True autonomy means having control over how, in what order, and at what speed you do your work. It’s about choosing your own approach, not just following someone else’s plan. A team can work remotely and have flexible hours, but still lack real autonomy.

This explains why remote work policies often don’t boost motivation. They may change where people work, but not who decides how the work is done. Employees still feel the same lack of control, just in a different place.

There’s a simple test: when someone is given a goal, how much of the process is up to them? If none, they’re just following instructions, which leads to compliance, not real effort.

The key is to manage based on outcomes. If you give people flexibility but still judge them on how visible or responsive they are, or how many hours they log, you’re just shifting the focus of monitoring instead of removing it. Employees often respond by working longer hours to prove they’re present, even if they’re not in the office. Setting clear deliverables with agreed deadlines is what truly turns flexibility into autonomy.

Build relatedness deliberately

A lack of camaraderie is one of the biggest things missing at work, second only to development opportunities. Relatedness is another important factor that research supports, but it is often seen as something that just happens on its own.

But relatedness does not happen on its own, and some current trends actually make it harder. Hybrid work means people have fewer casual interactions. With fewer managers, there is no one to notice when people feel disconnected. Perks for individuals are also used alone, not together.

It is important to remember the difference between shared activities and individual benefits. Two thirds of UK employees say that having a sense of community or social support helps them keep up healthy habits. This is why a wellness program that people join together builds connection, while a discount code used alone does not.

The simplest way to build connection costs nothing. Set aside time in team meetings for something other than status updates, and encourage managers to learn about their team members beyond just their work tasks.

Treat trust as an intervention, not a mood

In the UK, trust in senior leadership is lower than the global average—59% compared to 71%. This gap is similar to the difference in motivation between CEOs and individual contributors: 81% of CEOs feel motivated, but only 57% of individual contributors do.

These numbers highlight the same problem from different angles. When people do not believe in the direction, they are less likely to go above and beyond.

This is why trust stands apart from other factors. Workload, clarity, and autonomy relate to the tasks themselves. Trust is about whether the work feels meaningful. If employees do not trust their leaders, it affects everything else. People who doubt the strategy are likely to do only what is required.

Trust builds when leaders' words match what employees see in practice. The fastest way to lose trust is to break promises, especially when deadlines arrive. Staying silent also hurts trust.

Communication is essential here. Wellhub's research shows that 27% of employees say poor communication from leaders leads to burnout, just as much as limited flexibility or lack of recognition. Being honest about bad news is even more important than sharing good news. When people do not get information, they keep guessing and usually expect the worst.

Feeling heard is not the same as just being informed, and it is what truly boosts motivation. Feedback tools like skip-level meetings, open sessions with leaders, or anonymous channels only work if people see real changes afterward. If a survey finds a problem but nothing changes, it is worse than not asking. It turns a private frustration into something everyone knows the organization ignored.

How Wellhub keeps UK employees motivated

With one subscription, Wellhub lets your employees use more than 4,000 gyms, studios, classes, and mental health and nutrition apps. This removes the biggest barrier for 73% of employees, who say cost makes it hard to focus on their wellbeing.

This is important for motivation, since people need extra energy to stay motivated. In fact, 89% say they perform better at work when they focus on their wellbeing. A structured wellbeing program helps: 61% of employees with one feel good or are thriving, compared to 40% without.

Wellhub also offers something less obvious. Shared activities let colleagues train together, not just use a discount on their own. This matters because camaraderie was the second most common thing missing for workers who felt the least motivated.