Want your employees to innovate? Give them a bonus!

Want your engineers to fix more of the bugs in your software? Give them a bonus!

Want your marketers to convert more of the leads into customers? Give them a bonus!

The financial incentives sure sound nice. But science found that this system of rewards and motivation isn't what you need to get your workforce to put the pedal to the metal in terms of performance.

A study by Harvard's Teresa Amabile examined 26 project teams from 7 companies, 238 individuals, and over 12,000 work diary entries. Here's what they found:

Making consistent and meaningful progress is the leading motivator among today's workers.

Nothing else comes close. Not even those damn bonuses!

But how do you help employees make consistent progress and derive a sense of achievement from their work? Let's take a quick look at this year's best place to work for answers.