We all have days when going through daily activities is a pleasure, like a cruise on a calm sea. Nevertheless, inevitably, there are days when we want to be anywhere but work. Everyone faces changes in their disposition, but a little daydreaming or feeling low never hurt anyone. Still, this can quickly become a problem if the employees feel constantly disengaged and they lack motivation for longer periods.
Competition to attract and retain top talent – both for office and frontline workers – will further compel employers to expand and innovate total rewards packages that support employees in and outside the workplace. The spotlight on mental health, financial wellness, childcare, motivation, shifts that work for all, and an individual's sense of meaning at work will burn even brighter as the new generation floods the workforce. As employees continue to expect more from their employers, organizations that take a proactive, equitable, and inclusive approach to support the entire individual will reap gains in productivity, engagement, and loyalty.
Undeniable, for employees, money is the most important aspect of why they come to work every day. But it is not the only one. You, as a manager, have so many other systems and tools available to motivate precious candidates to choose you and employees to work better and stay longer in your company.
Get to know the environment where your business activates, know your employees and learn what motivates them to work efficiently for your company to stay on top of a constantly developing market.
If you're looking to identify what motivates employees to stay longer in a company, you might also consider our guide on employee retention where we detail 10 strategies to motivate your employees to be more loyal to the company.
Your only interest as a manager is to see your business grow.To this end, you can use all the levers and sophisticated tools you want, but if you don't motivate your employees properly, all your attempts are in vain.
If you're looking for tips to boost your employees' motivation, here are 10 simple ideas to keep you and your team motivated.
Employee motivation improves significantly when their work is known and recognized by superiors.
Small and medium-sized businesses can take small steps to value and recognize employees' work. With small gestures, you can show that you care about your employees and their contributions. Such gestures increase employee morale, and if you implement a system, it can have important results.
Here are some examples of how you can appreciate the work of the staff:
Employees who have the opportunity to learn continuously and are challenged in the workplace by their managers to become better are motivated by a sense of achievement and personal development. This challenge may be accepting a different role, managing a new or more valuable project, or representing the company and speaking in front of the public, even though the colleague has not done this before.
Employees whose work allows them to contribute to a greater cause they believe in are driven by a greater sense of achievement and purpose, which also helps boost staff confidence in their own abilities.
Another example of how they can develop at work is to take over management activities. Let them lead: During meetings and whenever possible, let another team member lead the conversation and the topics discussed. Not only can they share their opinions and be heard that way, but they are motivated to make their words and ideas happen afterward.
Also, help them to continue learning: offer to pay part of their tuition costs or send them to vocational training courses. Through education, their confidence and motivation will be on another level.
A pleasant experience at the workplace increases both the productivity of employees and their motivation. A work environment where employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they are contributing to the company's success. To create a pleasant working environment you need to consider a number of aspects:
When it comes to Gen Z, workplace flexibility is a very important factor, followed by salary. Be flexible about where they work, when they work, and how they work, and they will be highly motivated.
A flexible company is a company that allows you to make up a lost hour, one that allows you to work from home, or if you have to go to the office, you can go. Flexibility can also be in working hours. It doesn't matter if you start very early or later, each of us has certain hours when we are productive. And a flexible manager understands and accepts this as long as the job gets done.
The way you work, relate, solve problems, collaborate and socialize in a team has an important role in motivation and job satisfaction. Teammates may be different, but if you have the same professional values and work to create things together, it boils down to success.
Here are some activities that contribute to team dynamics:
Offer promotions: Not every position has an opportunity for advancement, which discourages employees. You need to find ways to motivate them financially and give them a sense of career progression.
Remember that money is obviously a very important aspect when recruiting a new employee. And if this meets your needs and lifestyle, then in time you should focus on other aspects of motivation.
Well known author Daniel Pink, in the book to Drive, highlights research-backed reasons why the reward and bonus system does not work as expected because:
How often have you had a toxic boss and wanted to leave the company, start looking for a new job, or even make that change? The same can be the case with the staff you are responsible for. To demonstrate that you are a good manager who supports your colleagues, we recommend a series of ideas:
Get rid of systems that have been proven wrong: Your loyalty is to your employees, not your system or procedures. If they don't work, show them you're going to ditch them. Being stuck in a bad system is demoralizing and makes staff powerless. Optimize your HR processes and move to cloud HR systems.
Effective communication between management and employees about organizational goals facilitates informing employees, reducing errors, and improving company performance. Here are 3 critical elements that must be communicated to benefit from such advantages:
When a significant project has been completed, or after you have successfully completed a conference or had a great quarter - do not let things pass as if nothing happened. Celebrate these outstanding results with your colleagues.
A saying goes, "Work hard, Play hard." These elements will not go unnoticed. They will create a special dynamic in the team and will energize colleagues. We notice that some companies celebrate success as following:
Remember. You will have several colleagues with you to grow the company and develop it. You must find out what motivates them and provide as many such experiences as possible to keep them close. Staff turnover is high, and companies with processes to make employees feel appreciated, valued, and rewarded will be with the company in difficult moments and when you celebrate successes.
As an HR Manager or CEO is important to know the motivational theories:
Five needs in Maslow's theory of work motivation
Image via Simply Psychology
McClelland approaches the needs also in order of importance. They are best explained visually in a pyramidal format.
Known also as the Two-Factor or Hygiene Theory, Herzberg's Motivation Theory is exemplified through two categories:
Image source Marketing91
Wrapping up
In the near future, policies will continue to be revised by both organizations and legislation with a focus on people-centric solutions that motivate employees, allow them to celebrate, recover, manage life events, care for others, and grieve on their own timeline.
Revising time-off policies and enacting creative motivation solutions will arm organizations with a competitive edge for top talent in parts of the world with low unemployment while helping businesses comply with and stay ahead of growing regulation.
According to psychologists, self-realization is a very human thing. It is our basic nature to nurture something and see it flourish, it is applicable to most things we do in our day-to-day life. This is true for both social and societal spaces.
Motivation plays a very important factor in a human's life. Whether it is about improving ourselves or our organization's performance. Motivated employees don't need to be told how to get things done, they take initiatives, are eager to take up additional responsibilities, are innovative and go-getters.
Motivation, therefore, plays a very important factor and ensures employees remain active and contribute their best towards their organization.
Employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity that a company's workers bring to their jobs. Motivation is a behavioral progression that instigates an individual to move toward a goal and guides him in the process. Motivation can help someone become independent and live the desired lifestyle. It equips one with the leverage to explore limits and survey ideas and ideals.
Employees seek more than money; hence cash or cash-like rewards are no longer sufficient to motivate them. Members of the younger generation appear to care more than older workers do about intangible rewards; they want to feel their input makes a difference within their circle of collaborators.
What employees crave is to feel that their managers appreciate them and aren't afraid to show it, not only in paycheck terms, but in other ways such as flexible work-at-home schedules, gift cards for pulling off impressive projects, or even just by saying “thank you” for a job well done.
Finding ways to motivate employees is always an employee management concern. Employee motivation can sometimes be particularly problematic for small businesses. The owner has often spent years building a company hands-on and therefore finds it difficult to delegate meaningful responsibilities to others. But they should be mindful of such pitfalls: the effects of low employee motivation on small businesses can be harmful. Such problems include complacency, disinterest, even discouragement. Such attitudes can cumulate into crises.
On the other hand, a small business can provide an ideal atmosphere for employee motivation: employees see the results of their contributions directly; feedback is swift and visible. A smoothly working and motivated workforce also frees the owner from day-to-day chores for thinking of long-term development.
Furthermore, a tangible and emotional reward can mean the retention of desirable employees. People evolve in creative work environments and want to make a difference. Ideally, the work result itself will give them a feeling of accomplishment—but well-structured reward and recognition programs can underline this consequence.
Motivation in itself is a highly complex activity and affected by many factors in the business. The benefits of employee motivation are numerous; however, we would like to list a few of the most important:
Now, when someone asks you why employee motivation is important, you will have some good arguments to share.
There are two types of motivation controlling our lives and influencing our decisions and actions:
Both Extrinsic and Intrinsic motivations have different effects on the overall lives of people.
Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is key to performance management. If you, as a manager, spend all your time trying to incentivize great performance through external motivators when an employee's motivation really lies within, you will not only waste time and money, but also you will lose the interest of your top performers.
In our modern knowledge-based society, using money or any other cash-like rewards as motivators without appropriate recognition increases the employee' s extrinsic motivation and erodes the intrinsic motivation.
In the book, “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions & New Directions”, Dr. Richard Ryan and Edward Deci are describing the intrinsic motivation as “the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence".
Employees experience intrinsic motivation when they feel that the work they are performing is coherent with their beliefs, personal values, and goals. Intrinsic motivations are typically tied to some deep sense of personal satisfaction, which can be tremendously beneficial for employees.
Intrinsic motivators come from within; they are more psychological than extrinsic motivators. In fact, some experts go so far as to say that intrinsic motivation is the only type of motivation that leads to serious success. When employees are intrinsically motivated, they are more likely to perform well and get promoted.
Intrinsic motivation can come from several sources, including the desire to please a manager, to improve a particular skill, or to further the company's mission. Intrinsic motivation is the reason why personal development objectives are so important to successful performance management.
Examples of Intrinsic Rewards
To fully motivate employees, managers need to lean on intrinsic motivators. The following are examples of intrinsic motivators that should be incorporated into every organization's performance management system:
Extrinsic motivation is easy to understand. Companies have been trying to motivate their employees extrinsically for a long time.
Extrinsic motivation is the motivation that comes from the external world. Extrinsic motivators tend to be financial or tangible. They generally come in the form of an increased salary, a bonus, a company car, or a promotion. These rewards, as you can tell, are external to the work itself. It is also worth noting that the form of an extrinsic reward is usually determined by someone else, such as the employee's manager.
Essentially, those who are extrinsically motivated do things primarily to receive a reward. According to this logic, an employee doesn't perform well because they enjoy a certain sense of satisfaction or they want to help the business thrive. Rather, they perform well to earn material compensation for their efforts, such as salary or paychecks.
According to Alfie Kohn's article from Harvard Business Review, extrinsic rewards are not as motivational as we once believed them to be. In fact, for non-routine, mostly creative work, extrinsic motivations are generally considered a counterproductive form of motivation that should be avoided by the employers.
Employee motivation and well-being are finally taking center stage in the business world. For too long, they have been viewed as the responsibility of the HR department and not an integral part of business strategy. However, it is increasingly clear that unhealthy and unengaged employees are a drag on productivity, innovation, and the bottom line.
Healthy and engaged employees, working in a strong workplace culture, are the secret for business success. The following statistics underscore the need to make engagement and wellness strategic priorities for an organization.
Highly motivated teams show 21% greater profitability
According to Gallup, employee engagement consists of concrete behavior, not an abstract feeling. The report finds that the most successful organizations make employee engagement central to their business strategy. They give employees clear expectations and provide them with the tools and support to do their best work. Those teams who score in the top 20% in engagement realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism, and 59% less turnover. Motivated employees show up every day with passion, purpose, presence, and energy.
89% of HR leaders agree that ongoing feedback and check-ins are key for successful outcomes
Based on the GloboForce survey on the importance of employee motivation finds clear and regular feedback to be critical. Feedback and recognition should always tie back to a company's core values and mission. Employees want to be reminded that their work has purpose and meaning. This is another reminder that employee motivation should be featured as a central part of the overall business strategy.
Employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work
As this Salesforce report finds, ensuring that employees' voices are heard needs to be part of a larger push for equality and inclusiveness in the workplace. Companies with greater gender and ethnic diversity consistently outperform the competition. They more accurately reflect the diversity of society and reach more potential customers. Inviting more people to the table, and ensuring their voices are heard, is a win-win for everyone.
72% of CEOs believe the state of workplace empathy needs to change
Empathy is an essential part of emotional intelligence, the ability to identify and manage one's own emotions and be mindful of the emotions of others. Engagement and empathy are inextricably linked, and employees don't feel truly respected and empowered in an organization that does not show empathy. The results of a 2019 survey show that: 72% of CEOs said the state of workplace empathy needs to change, a 15-point increase over the last two years. Yet, despite this positive trend, the “Empathy Gap” (the difference between employees and employers in their perception of empathy in the workplace) is widening. CEOs believe things are getting better, but employees are not so sure: 92% of CEOs say their organization is empathetic, while 72 %of employees say they work for an empathetic employer, down 6 percent from previous years.
61% of employees are burned out on the job
CareerBuilder's survey on stress in the workplace finds 31% of respondents report extremely high levels of stress at work. The survey documents how those high-stress levels manifested in poor physical health (fatigue, aches and pains, weight gain) and compromised mental health (depression, anxiety, anger). These findings emphasize the connections between wellness and engagement, and how stress undermines both.
89% of workers at companies that support well-being initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work
In organizations where employees do not view leadership as committed to their well-being, only 17% would recommend the company as a good place to work. The APA report stresses that employee well-being cannot be addressed separated, through a singular program but is instead a reflection of broader culture and climate within the organization.
61% of employees agree that they have made healthier lifestyle choices because of their company's wellness program
This is just one of many findings in an Aflac summary of current benefit trends. A comprehensive wellness program will help employees change their lifestyle and make better choices, resulting in higher productivity and job satisfaction. The same report finds that Millennials, more than any other group, factor in benefits like health and wellness programs in deciding whether to take or remain in a job.
There are innumerable reasons that cause workplace demotivation and low morale, and they vary depending on the individual.
Here are eight of the most common reasons why people hate their jobs:
If you would like to become a better people manager, discover the skills that can boost your company results, employee motivation and team dynamics.
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