Motivational Hypnosis as a Tool to Eliminate the Effects of Covid-19 Perception on Employee Motivation

Abstract

Covid-19's emergence has significantly impacted the world, its workplaces and the motivation of employees. This study aims to determine the impact of how Covid-19 is perceived on employees' intrinsic motivation. It also aims to discover whether a motivational hypnosis session may influence the pandemic's effects, given that hypnosis is a well-known mental intervention that has been used for centuries to treat and help people in domains as varied as therapy, sports, education, and more recently, business. A three-step qualitative experimental study took place, involving ten employee volunteers. The first step was a first questionnaire exploring the effect of their perceptions of Covid-19 on their motivation. A motivational hypnosis session (written to increase employees' intrinsic motivation from the emotional intelligence framework) took place afterwards; the last step was a second questionnaire answered by the workers 48 hours after the session. Results showed that Covid-19 had slightly less of a negative effect on managers' motivation, which was 79% compared to non-executive employees' 87%. The motivational hypnosis session helped only two out of the ten employees to reduce the effects of the way they perceived the pandemic. However, it did have positive impact as it increased employees' intrinsic motivation. Future research on using hypnosis for the benefit of employees should therefore be conducted.