Motivation: neurophysiology of the pleasure of working

In 2004, Caterpillar (Corporate Leadership Council, 2004) had saved 8.8 million dollars in a single Business Unit -International Manufacturing Facility with an intervention of a few months on staff's motivation and engagement.These results allowed to understand the importance of those "intangible" factors, previously unconsidered, that decrease the level of attrition (a sense of perceived wear and tear) from 1.00 to 0.41, reduce the absenteeism from 1.0 to 0.61, and the overtime worked from 1.00 to 0.26.Therefore, this evidence has underlined that motivated and engaged people represent the necessary basis for building productive and performing organizations, demonstrating that those skills, commonly defined as "soft", have a "hard" impact on the income statement.In light of this evidence, the "Caterpillar case" represents a striking example of what neuroscience, a few years later, was able to prove by examining, with the use of sophisticated technologies and tools, the relationship between different dimensions: emotion and cognition, motivation and level of attention, creativity and focus, and the quality of thought.In particular, from neuroscientific investigations it has emerged that workers' performance and well-being are closely correlated to individual motivational drives and the type of relationship with the organizational context and the work performed.Moreover, also engagement appears to influence the workers' performance and the state of well-being.In particular, Rutledge (2005) has provided the most exhaustive definition of the engagement construct, considered as the willingness of individuals to act in a way that follows organizational interests, feeling themselves attracted (e.g., "I want to do this job"), dedicated (e.g., "I am committed to the success of my work") and enthusiastic (e.g., "I like what I do during my work").Therefore, in the last 40 years, some psycho-social research, conducted in social and work psychology, has documented all those factors that can favor motivation or induce demotivation in workers.