20 Things that Will Motivate Your Employees

1. Trustworthy leadership
2. Gratifying work and appreciation
3. Career advancement and stability
4. 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

5. High-quality training and development – encouragement to study for professional qualifications and belong to professional bodies.
6. 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.
7. Camaraderie, peer motivation and an ‘open door’ policy; a culture in which managers and upper management are highly approachable.
8. Sense of belonging – employees feel valued when they feel a sense of belonging.
9. 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.
10. Empowerment to understand and practice self-accountability
11. Set clear objectives, expectations and rewards – show recognition and offer meaningful rewards for performance and celebrate successes.
12. Regular appraisal and feedback – restate business objectives and recognize employees contribution
13. Fairness – provide equal opportunity for employees and demonstrate diversity and inclusion.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. 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.’
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. Overall sound corporate culture