How much do you trust your boss? When they imply that by taking on the additional tasks in order to ‘help them out’ or ‘get yourself noticed within the company’, how confident are you that they will follow through on their side of the agreement? The psychological contract that you have with the company and is a huge motivator to get up on a cold winter morning, fight through the rush hour traffic in order to be the first one at your desk.

While the actual contract is with the company and will outline all the important details of the job and rewards package, it is the unwritten agreement with the manager that can be potentially more motivational in getting the employee to come into work each day and help the company to achieve their business objectives.

The unspoken agreement

There is usually an unspoken agreement between an employee and their manager that by helping out and taking on more roles and responsibilities, that they will be in mind when the next promotions are being thought about. But the idea of this has to have an inferred timeline, as employees will be unwilling to carry this additional workload indefinitely; especially if they are seeing people continually being promoted ahead of them. 

As there are no longer jobs for life, it's important that the employee trust that their job is safe and secure. After all, it is this trust that motivates them to work week in week out, year after year without being tempted to look anywhere else.

But, it also works the other way around. As a manager, you hope that by training employees and showing that them their value, they will invest their time in the company.

Non-financial rewards

Non-financial rewards keep us committed and loyal to a company once our financial needs have been met. How important the financial elements are is dependent on where you are within your career.

When you are just starting out, it is likely that you will not have as many other responsibilities to distract you from work, and you will want to show to your boss how committed you are to the company. Whereas further into a career, it is possible that your financial requirements are already being met, and the psychological contract will deal more with the stability and structure of your job.

It's about trust

After working successfully in a department for five years, why are you suddenly being moved to another department? You have spent time building up good knowledge and a good reputation. When you are suddenly moved into an underperforming area of the company, it can have a direct effect on your reputation and standing.

We all have times when we lose motivation in the office. Eventually it will not matter how much we are getting paid if we do not feel that we can trust our manager anymore. If they don’t back up their words in this situation, how do we know that they will honor their promises in the future?

Did we miss any key points? Let us know in the comments section of this blog.  

This post was provided by Joe Flanagan, the Senior Resume Consultant at Velvet Jobs a resume builder and job search website for candidates of all ages and abilities. When he's not helping people with their career you can find him learning Mandarin Chinese and playing five-a-side football.