An experienced employer or chief does know that the attentive approach to their workers, timely stimulations and reactions to mistakes are the basic rules helping to make the business successful. Staff management is the entire science, and it pays special attention to the motivation of employees and the methods to increase and keep it. You know, if I could go back to my studentship years, I’d prefer to pay people to write essays instead of me in order to get more time to learn this discipline.
Motivation: Meaning and Purpose
The employee motivation means organizing the working process inside the company to make every worker do their best while doing their job and give “101%” of performance. In other words, the proper organization gives every worker that internal stimulus increasing their job effectiveness directed to reach the defined common goal.
It is frequent for business managers to use old ways: they reward the best, punish the worst, and organize annual corporate parties for everyone. Still, this pattern may not always be effective. An employee will doubtfully want to visit a party if their job environment suppresses them daily.
The correct stimulation of staff members requires chiefs to know basic motivation methods. An employee who felt their contribution to remain unnoted or underestimated once won’t be maximally effective in future.
Everyone feels the need to be praised: in this case, a newbie who may feel difficult to join the team is equal to that strict careerist that hides his wish to hear something good about their job under the dry mask of responsibility and loyalty.
Obviously, every manager should develop individual motivation schemes and systems for his or her employees.
Motivation Principles
The universal rule or approach towards staff motivation does not exist. However, there are principles to apply when developing your featured methods:
1. Motivation that allows a worker to feel important and needed will be effective. Such a reward will make colleagues respect him or her, too. Still, you should keep everything moderated, otherwise the loss of rewards will cause an employee’s moral disqualification.
2. Unpredicted single-time rewards work better than regular ones (monthly bonuses for high quality working). Employees get used to regular methods and take them for granted as a result.
3. A compliment works better than punishment.
4. The chief’s reaction (both positive and negative one) should be instant. That’s how an employee feels important: the boss is not indifferent about their achievements or failures.
5. Intermediate results are results, too! Stimulation of employees based on smaller successes will most probably make them achieve the main goal quicker.
Economical Motivation
This is the one of the most obvious and popular ways to improve the productivity of employees. A correct approach towards salaries and bonuses (including free gym memberships, medical insurance, etc.) increases performance.
The boss should pay special attention to the organization of corporate parties. Such events allow employees to team up and become friends.
Non-Financial Motivation
Kinds of non-financial motivation are much more numerous. Those are:
- Career promotion. Every employee should know that their effective job will be the reason for promotion. This means better status among colleagues and boosts professional growth, too. However, moderation is required, otherwise competition will show up among workers. If that happens, you can forget about teamwork.
- Skill development training paid by the company. Education will improve the staff professionalism and become the great way to motivate every team member to do their job better.
- The company’s image creation and management. The organization that gained popularity on the market does not only attract new clients but makes employment there prestigious. This prestige is another perfect motivation lever for employees.
- Feedback is wonderful to motivate workers, too. When every employee knows their opinion is important for chiefs and top managers, and when they are not afraid to offer job optimization ideas, their feedback makes a positive impact on the entire company.
Of course, it is the employer who picks economic and non-financial motivation measures. The director is the only person having the right to decide which stimulation ways will be the most effective to improve staff productivity regarding the modern market conditions.
Non-Standard (Unusual) Motivation
Non-standard methods are probably the most effective among all motivational approaches. Such solutions don’t require big financial investments as they rely exclusively on the chief’s creativity. Many employers reward workers who offer unusual motivation methods, too.
Here are some examples:
- A funny way to punish sloppy workers. It’s not obligatory to call off their bonus or give fines. Rewarding them with a funny “title”, such as “Department’s best sloth” or “Turtle of the month” may be just enough to motivate employees to improve their performance in future.
- Sudden gifts. An unexpected reward (even a small one) motivates the employer to keep working with the same or even better effectiveness.
- Care about families. Here we mean organizing New Year parties and gifts for kids, discounts for their staff family members, etc.
- Additional rest. It’s not always required to pay bonus funds. An additional day-off works as a suitable alternative to money prizes.
- Repetition, or the analogy method. The chief motivates employees for high performance with a personal example.
To Conclude
Once again, the universal rule or method of motivation does not exist. Non-financial approaches can be more effective than money rewards quite frequently. A correct solution to motivate your employees is to develop the featured complex of measures directed to stimulate their performance.
Every employer should master this science. Seriously, the decision to ask someone to write my college paper one day and to spend at least a couple hours to learn more about motivation could save me from multiple mistakes in my business. Don’t be like me if you want to reach success quicker.
