What is your primary motivation for working

Came across this short survey on Lifehacker.com which was trying to determine the popular motivators. After filling up the option, I was shown the results and apparently a lot of people are working for the money in jobs they don’t like.

Thankfully I am one of those people who are working on a job/gig that I actually like doing, with the freedom and flexibility I want (one of advantages of being your own boss) and getting paid well (another advantage of being in business for yourself). But it made me wonder, if my team feels the same way.

I was wondering about ways to gauge their satisfaction and motivation levels with their jobs. I would primarily suspect that they are in it for the money. I have the motivation of doing the work well as it is my company and I want to build it up. But does the team feel that way? How can I make them feel the same way about the company? Give them the feeling that it is their company as well?

I would like to think that I am paying them well. I ended up offering all of them more than they asked for. So in monetary terms I exceeded their expectations. But that will only last a short while. Once they get accustomed to  getting that salary a few months, that motivation will wear down.

So the next and more sustainable thing is to get them interested in their work. I think some of the operational management and work design principles will help here. Like not keeping them stuck on one project forever and rotating them in projects and maybe allowing them to work on an open source project, keeping them abreast with new and latest technologies, etc. And I would also like to start building a web application with the team and give them an equity share and so if and when someday if when it makes money, they will also make money.

It is a conversation that I should have with them sometime or the other. I would really like to find out what motivates them and then feed that motivation. Hopefully, it will be something related to work itself!