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Explore 20 things that will motivate your employees. Implementing most of these 20 things will greatly shift and improve your organizational culture in a remarkable way.
By Catherine Adenle
These 20 things that will motivate your employees are important to your employees’ morale. Without most of these 20 things highlighted below for you to do in order to motivate your employees, the chance of sustaining your growth, increasing your profit and remaining competitive as an organizations is slim. Why? Employee motivation is the psychological forces that determine the direction of an employee’s behaviour in an organization, a person’s level of effort and a person’s level of persistence. A lot of research indicated that there is usually a high turnover of highly talented and productive employees from organizations where employee motivation is not at the forefront of their vision.
Small or big organizations need motivated employees to run and make them successful. Studies show that employee motivation has a direct impact on productivity and growth. A highly motivated employee will invest time and their best work into each and every aspect of their work and responsibilities. Improved job performances of such an employee will add value to the organization and promote self-pride and contentment for the employee.
These days, being successful and maintaining success while doing business all over the world is very challenging and competitive. To be an exceptional organization with an agile corporate performance and revenue growth, you need to be aware of and implement most of these 20 things that will motivate your employees.
Among all the important factors needed to run a successful business, employees constitute the biggest in terms of productivity. You may have a great product, system and idea, without a motivated workforce, you can still fail spectacularly. Having a motivated workforce is a valuable asset which delivers huge value to any organization. It helps organizations to maintain and strengthen their business and revenue growth.
Motivated employees are inclined to be more productive than non-motivated employees.
As a manager or leader, first, you have to find out what motivates the majority of employees. There are many things included below on the list of the 20 things that will motivate your employees. Knowing these things will help you to to create a suitable environment for your employees so that they are accountable, and that will help their own motivation to do what is expected of them well. By doing this, they will feel a sense of belonging and ownership.
20 things that will motivate your employees:
- Trustworthy leadership
- Gratifying work and appreciation
- Career advancement and stability
- Respect for a good work-life balance – offer employees the opportunity for flexible working and respect their personal times
“From 5 p.m. on Friday to 9 a.m. on Monday should be people’s own time, not the company’s.” – See This is Why People Leave Your Company
- High-quality training and development – encouragement to study for professional qualifications and belong to professional bodies.
- Proactive and regular communication – you cannot communicate too much to employees, but help them to willingly seek, find and engage in dialogues with everyone. This will promote collaborations and drive innovation. Communicate regularly and encourage feedback. Communicate one to one, one to all, one to many, many to many, many to one etc.
- Camaraderie, peer motivation and an ‘open door’ policy; a culture in which managers and upper management are highly approachable.
- Sense of belonging – employees feel valued when they feel a sense of belonging.
- Autonomy and having a sense of independence demonstrates trust – delegate key tasks to empower employees and stimulate innovation. Studies have shown that how creative an employee feels when working on a project or on their tasks without the feeling of being micro-managed is one of the strongest and most important factors in employee motivation.
- Empowerment to understand and practice self-accountability
- Set clear objectives, expectations and rewards – show recognition and offer meaningful rewards for performance and celebrate successes.
- Regular appraisal and feedback – restate business objectives and recognize employees contribution
- Fairness – provide equal opportunity for employees and demonstrate diversity and inclusion.
- Attention to bad performance and attitude – when most employees complain about a certain person’s performance and attitude, address the issue, offer training and support. If not, everyone with a good attitude is going to be offended.
- Provide meaningful ties to the company’s mission – if you want your employees to actually believe your mission, relate it into their everyday tasks. When you establish rules with your employees, explain how they help fulfill your mission. That will make them feel like they’re working for a better reason and towards a common goal.
- Minimal bureaucratic hurdles, rigid policies and rules: Imposing too many laws, rules and formal processes will often impede the ability to motivate staff. It simply says, ‘we don’t trust you to do the right thing.’
- Putting employees above customers – the customer isn’t always right. Your employees should be your number one customers. Take care of your employees and your employees will take care of your customers.
- Eliminate a culture of blame – Never focus on blame; focus on contributions. When there’s a problem, don’t put employees on the defensive. That only backs them into a corner and forces them to start blaming others on the staff. Chances are, there are always multiple people that have contributed to a problem. Focus on solving the problem together instead of finding out where to point the fingers.
- Avoidance of incessant downsizing – when times are tough for some organizations, the easiest thing for them to do is downsize. Instead, be creative and ask your employees to come up with solutions before you embark on yet another downsizing exercise. An employer that treats its employees as true partners makes every effort to avoid redundancies. The key is for employees to trust that management is doing everything possible to retain them. Voluntary steps to reduce costs can be employed to maintain staff engagement.
- Overall sound corporate culture
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See Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model
Litmus Test
As a manager or leader in an organization, ask yourself “Would I want to work here as an employee reporting to me as a manager?” If you would leave, then, it’s time to start working on motivating your employees. If that’s not your immediate priority, then don’t be surprised when your most talented employees leave. If you want good people to stay, create an environment in which they can function and thrive. Don’t kill their morale; their engagement and motivation, feed them instead.
See Unorthodox Ways to Keep Employees Motivated
Now that we all know that motivating employees so that they do their best for their organizations is not just about money but one of the absolute true qualities of business leadership and management right up there with organization’s vision, so, what’s stopping you?
See 30 Non-Cash Rewards to Give at Work
On Pinterest, we found this apt Infographic on 10 Company Culture Killers by OfficeVibe :
Now that you have explored these 20 things that will motivate your employees, what can you add? Let’s hear from you. Leave your comments below.
Founder, Catherine's Career Corner. The career site empowering and inspiring ambitious candidates of all ages and professions to thrive and work smarter on their careers. Gladly helping all career-minded people worldwide to explore their career, manage change and understand how new technologies are changing and enhancing the future of work.
I agree. Engaged and confident employees are not motivated by money.
indeed! I am with you, I agree too. Thanks for your comment.
Until Organizations realise that motivation goes beyond money but includes all of these things, nothing is going to change. Thanks for a great post, @catherineadenle