Strategies To Motivate Employees
It is a well-known fact that when employees are motivated the potential for organizational success is high. How to motivate employees – is a critical question for every manager. Every manager must work on motivating their employees to bring their best efforts towards organizational goals.
Motivated and satisfied employees are key to organizational success. When employees are motivated they bring the following benefits to the organizations.
- Motivated Employees Further Motivate Others
- Improved Productivity
- Develops Positive Attitude
- Stable Workforce
- Optimal Use of Resources
- Reduced Absenteeism and Turnover
- Remedy For Change
- Minimizes Dispute
- Reduced Supervision
- Ensures Goal Achievement
In addition, the following are some of the strategies or techniques you can use to motivate employees. They are:
Maintain Good Communication
Good communication is necessary to communicate with each other in the organization. As every employee is a social being they wish to get information regarding their performance and the organization. As a manager, you should maintain a smooth flow of information among all members about the common goal.
Goals, responsibility, authority, and outcomes should be communicated clearly to all the workers. Such effective communication increases employee acceptance and motivation.
Ensure Transparency
Transparency has a key role in changing the moods of employees. It is common that everyone wishes to know about the condition of the organization. Employees wish to know the performance of their actions and results.
As such, you should clearly communicate to employees what is going on in the organization and how the organization is doing. All information should be made available to employees except confidential ones.
Effective Job Design
Job design affects employee motivation, job satisfaction, job commitment, and organizational commitment. While designing jobs, different factors such as organizational factors, environmental factors, and behavioral factors need to be considered.
In essence, the right job should be given to the right employee.
Related: Characteristics of Workplace Motivation
Increase Participation
Employees should also be invited to important decision-making processes. Their concerns should be considered in planning and decisions.
When employees feel their concerns or opinions are considered in the decision they feel motivated. Further, they take such decision or plan as their own and show greater interest in executing such plan in the practical field.
Enable Good Pay
One of the effective ways to motivate employees is through good pay. The main reason employees work in the organization is to get paid for their contribution.
There should be a fair payment system considering employees’ positions, talent, and the tasks they perform. Further, different financial and non-financial pay can be used to motivate them.
Provide Job Security
Job security implies that you will be able to work in your job as long as you please and will not force anything you to leave. Employees will be motivated towards their jobs if they have a feeling of job security and future provision.
To make jobs secure different economic security, health security, security against sickness, disability, and old age provisions can be added to the job.
Increase Competition
Competition is a popular tool for employee motivation. Employees in the organization compete with each other to fulfill their ego needs. And, the employee who performs best gets awarded the prize. Such a prize acts as an influencer of employees’ behavior toward the accomplishment of the target.
Delegate Authority
Delegation of authority is an effective way to increase employee morale and motivation. It is a process of transferring certain authority from the manager to his subordinates. Through this employees work in a higher position and enjoy the feeling superior. It further develops the employees.
Offer A Career Growth Option
Every employee wants to scale up their skills. A career growth option in the firm motivates and inspires employees to show their best talent and give their best efforts. There should be the option for promotion and succession planning in the organization.
Related: Approaches To Motivation
Flexible Work Schedule
All employees may not be happy to work at the same time or shift. Some may want to work in the evening whereas some may want to work during the day. So based on the employee’s needs and situation, the work schedule should be set for either morning, day, evening, or night shift.
Listen To their Comment
A good leader as well as a manager always listens to his people. It is important to ask employees for feedback – since no one is the same, motivation factors for every employee may differ. You should have an honest and one-to-one conversation with your employees. And, positively respond to the comments of your employees.
Establish Work-Life Balance
In addition to professional life, employees do also have a personal life. They have family, partners, friends, and other external matters. A manager that understands employees’ personal life too, will better motivate his employees.
Employees are better able to focus on their work when they have a healthy work-life balance because they are less concerned about outside factors.
Read Next: What is a Team?