Ideas on Motivating Employees

Why do certain staff members put more effort in than others? That is the main question about employee motivation. It’s not easy to motivate your employees.

Limit Using Carrots and Sticks to Motivate Employees

Getting employees to produce the wanted results for the business is often motivated by the carrot and stick approach. However, the results from this approach have been rather uninteresting. Rewards and punishments are the motivators used by certain managers.

It is difficult to judge people by the same virtue as each employee brings different skills to the workplace. Also, the carrot and stick is no longer effective because more effort in put in by some employees compared to others.

Concentrate on Using the Intangibles to Motivate Employees

An expensive reward means nothing compared to tapping into the internal feelings of your employees. At the end of the day all your employees are human beings and are driven by the same types of things.

Being seen as an important person to the business and doing work that is value is what most employees want. Making progress in their chosen career and achieving personal goals are high on your employees’ priority list. Feeling appreciated, valued and included by their manager are all things that motivate employees.

You need to discover what each of your employees’ inner motivation is. This is what will help to get rid of employees putting in different levels of effort. You should allow your employees to do things rather than giving them things.

Treat Your Employees like Adults

Do you have an employee who is asking to leave early, calling in sick, gossiping with colleagues, knows you’re watching them and pretends to be busy? This is an example of them feeling like a child rather than an adult. You need to know what each employee thinks their role is within the company. In order to meet expectations, people will conform to roles and adopt their behaviour accordingly. Therefore, you need to make your expectations from each employee clear at the very beginning. They need to know what role they are going to play.

Employees will act like children, when they are treated like children. If they need to fake being sick for a day, try to look busy, sneak about and ask permission then they are being treated like school children. Your employees are all adults.

Support New Ideas

If an employee puts forward a business idea and it doesn’t work out, it still has motivated the employee and they have received your support. This is a sign that they care about the company and want it to do better.

Empower Each Individual

Employees will meet and exceed expectations if you give them a role. This gives them a sense of ownership, no matter how important it is. Your bottom line can be affected by employees who you don’t think are that important.

Don’t Let Them Become Bored

Break routines. Allow different people to chair the weekly meetings. Wednesday is often considered the ‘slump’ day and therefore the best day to hold bonding activities.

Acknowledge Professional Achievement

Employees are motivated by words more than you think. If the company owner or someone from management acknowledges their work, they will be more motivated.

For extra information about employee motivation, please visit www.officerecruiters.co.uk