SCARF

= the book “Your Brain at Work,” espouses the SCARF approach.

Description

"SCARF stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. “Basically, when a person is honest with themselves, they’re most motivated by one of those qualities,” Stirman explains. “As a manager, you can figure out which one motivates which employee, and reward them accordingly. A lot of managers will look at their team and think, ‘We should do a round of compensation increases because everyone’s been working so hard,’ but this isn’t the best incentive for everyone.”

Here’s how it looks:

• Status-oriented employees can be motivated by a possible title change, or having their name attached to more important projects.

• Certainty-oriented employees are motivated simply by the reassurance that their job is important and they are excelling.

• Autonomy-oriented employees may need the ability to work from home, or simply slip on their head phones to tune everyone else out.

• Relatedness-oriented employees are energized by opportunities to socialize with their coworkers – happy hours, softball games, etc.

• Fairness-oriented employees want to know the playing field is even, and they aren’t being exploited or cheated. They need to hear it consistently.

(http://firstround.com/article/How-Medium-is-building-a-new-kind-of-company-with-no-managers)