10 Ways To Stimulate Employee Motivation
Today's fast-moving business environment demands that the
effective manager be both a well-organized administrator and
highly adept in understanding people's basic needs and behaviour
in the workplace. Gaining commitment, nurturing talent, and
ensuring employee motivation and productivity require open
communication and trust between managers and staff.
1. Understand their behaviour
People at work naturally tend to adopt instinctive modes of
behaviour that are self-protective rather than open and
collaborative. This explains why emotion is a strong force in
the workplace and why management often reacts violently to
criticisms and usually seeks to control rather than take risks.
So, in order to eliminate this kind of perspective and to
increase employee motivation, it is best that you influence
behaviour rather than to change personalities. Insisting what
you expect from your employees will only worsen the situation.
2. Be sure that people's lower-level needs are met.
People have various kinds of needs. Examples of lower-level
needs are salary, job security, and working conditions. In order
to increase employee motivation, you have to meet these basic
needs. Consequently, failures with basic needs nearly always
explain dissatisfaction among staff. Satisfaction, on the other
hand, springs from meeting higher-level needs, such as
responsibility progress, and personal growth. When satisfaction
is met, chances are employee motivation is at hand.
3. Encourage pride
People need to feel that their contribution is valued and
unique. If you are a manager, seek to exploit this pride in
others, and be proud of your own ability to handle staff with
positive results. This, in turn, will encourage employee
motivation among your people.
4. Listen carefully
In many areas of a manager's job, from meetings and appraisals
to telephone calls, listening plays a key role. Listening
encourages employee motivation and, therefore, benefits both you
and your staff. So make an effort to understand people's
attitudes by careful listening and questioning and by giving
them the opportunity to express themselves.
5. Build confidence
Most people suffer from insecurity at some time. The many kinds
of anxiety that affect people in organizations can feed such
insecurity, and insecurity impedes employee motivation. Your
antidote, therefore, is to build confidence by giving
recognition, high-level tasks, and full information. In doing
so, you only not refurbish employee motivation but boost
productivity as well.
6. Encourage contact
Many managers like to hide away behind closed office doors,
keeping contact to a minimum. That makes it easy for an
administrator, but hard to be a leader. It is far better to keep
your office door open and to encourage people to visit you when
the door is open. Go out of your way to chat to staff on an
informal basis. Keep in mind that building rapport with your
staff will effectively increase employee motivation.
7. Use the strategic thinking of all employees.
It is very important to inform people about strategic plans and
their own part in achieving the strategies. Take trouble to
improve their understanding and to win their approval, as this
will have a highly positive influence on performance and
increasing employee motivation as well.
8. Develop trust
The quality and style of leadership are major factors in gaining
employee motivation and trust. Clear decision making should be
coupled with a collaborative, collegiate approach. This entails
taking people into your confidence and explicitly and openly
valuing their contributions. By simply giving your staff the
opportunity to show that you can trust them is enough to
increase employee motivation among them.
9. Delegate decisions
Pushing the power of decision-making downward reduces pressure
on senior management. It motivates people on the lower levels
because it gives them a vote of confidence. Also, because the
decision is taken nearer to the point of action, it is more
likely to be correct. Consequently, by encouraging them to
choose their own working methods, make decisions, and giving
them responsibility for meeting the agreed goal will encourage
employee motivation among your staff.
10. Appraising to motivate
When choosing methods of assessing your staff's performance,
always make sure that the end result has a positive effect on
employee motivation and increases people's sense of self-worth.
Realistic targets, positive feedback, and listening are key
factors.
If you follow these simple steps in increasing employee
motivation, rest assured you will have a good working
relationship with your staff at the same time boost you
company's productivity. Just bear in mind that people are
employed to get good results for the company. Their rates of
success are intrinsically linked to how they are directed,
reviewed, rewarded, trusted, and motivated by the management.