In today’s business, the readiness and ability of employees to voluntarily and proactively contribute to the creation and implementation of innovations through continuous improvements in processes, work and other aspects of joint activities becomes an extremely important source of efficiency and development of the organization. This ability is manifested in initiative behavior, the management of which requires the use of methods based on understanding the nature of employees’ proactivity. The article puts forward a theoretical justification for the specific motivational mechanisms of the employee’s initiative behavior, which differ significantly from the mechanisms of normative behavior; in the development of ideas about the intra-motivational nature of proactivity, the process of launching initiative behavior is described, including the stages of creating an impulse-challenge, self-actualization and self-organization; describes the main parameters of the organizational environment that supports staff initiatives. The presented results will be useful for conducting scientific research in the field of proactive behavior, as well as for the development of HR-policy and practical measures to motivate staff.