Motivated and committed employees tend to stick around. Why?

There’s a secret ingredient that makes these workers who they are.

Employee turnover is expensive. Onboarding, training, and bringing new personnel up to speed is costly, and the loss of valuable institutional knowledge can be incalculable.

ADP Research has shown that employees with a strong sense of motivation at work and commitment to the job are the least likely to be looking for something new. These are people who feel most connected to their work, their colleagues, and their employer.

So how do employers cultivate these motivated and committed workers? To find out, we dug deeper into our data to identify how or why this group of employees might offer practical solutions to the problem of high turnover. We found a secret ingredient that helps make these workers who they are.

Utilizing survey data collected monthly from a random, stratified panel sample of 2,500 U.S. workers dating back to December 2021, we created a single, unified measurement of motivation and commitment, the EMC Index. Workers who respond positively and with high frequency to the index items are classified as highly motivated and committed, or high MC. These people are less likely to have an intent to leave their current employers, but why?¹ The ADP Research Monthly Worker Sentiment Survey asks, “Which of the following best describes your desire to work for a different company?” Respondents select one of four response options: (1) No intent to leave my organization; (2) Not actively looking but would consider a new company if contacted by a recruiter or saw an opportunity (which we abbreviate to “Not actively looking but would consider leaving” in our chart); (3) Actively looking for a new job; (4) Actively engaged in the interview process for a new job. We combined options 3 and 4 to “Actively looking or interviewing for a new job” in our chart.

What we found

The secret ingredient is trust, specifically trust in people we work with, including teammates, managers and supervisors, and senior leaders.

Trust in teammates: Workers who trust their teammates are 16 times more likely to be highly motivated and committed compared to those who don’t.

Trust in managers: Workers who trust their managers and supervisors are 26 times more likely to be highly motivated and committed.

Trust in senior leaders: Workers who have trust in their organization’s senior leadership are 41 times more likely to be highly motivated and committed.

Trust takes time to build. Even the slightest leadership misstep could begin to erode trust.

What employers can do

There are several ways employers can build trust in their workforce.

One of the strongest relationships we found is when employees have a sense of freedom, flexibility, and autonomy at work. We define employee freedom as the ability to choose how work gets done. Flexibility is the latitude workers have to choose where they work and to set their own schedule. Autonomy refers to an employee’s ability to make daily decisions instead of being told what to do.

More than 3 in 5 workers—63 percent—say they don’t get the freedom, flexibility, or autonomy they need at work. About 25 percent say they get at least one of the three levels of independence. Only 12 percent say they have enough of all three.

Equipping employees with freedom, flexibility, and autonomy on the job are key steps in building trust. Workers who reported having all three levels of independence were far more likely to also have complete trust in their teammates, team leaders, and senior leaders. And when these workers feel they’re being trusted to get the job done in the way they feel best suited to do it, motivation and commitment increases dramatically.

Freedom, flexibility, and autonomy are strongly interdependent and related, but each brings something unique to the individual. We would love to be able to say that having higher levels of one or the other is more important to the big picture, but we can’t.

The takeaway

Since the pandemic, workers have grown accustomed to having flexibility in where they work. As some are called back to the office or work site, it is critical for employers to ensure that their teams still have freedom and autonomy on the job. Nearly 70 percent of workers who report having no flexibility on the job, but enough freedom and autonomy, are highly motivated and committed.

For workers who do say they have all the freedom and autonomy they need, work location seems to make little difference. People who do their jobs on site and those who don’t have similarly high levels of motivation and commitment. What seems to matter more is that they feel they’re trusted to get the job done, wherever that might be.

Employers can provide guidance and support where it’s needed while still giving employees ample freedom and autonomy to do their best work. Mutual trust is key to building any lasting relationship, including those in the workplace.