7 Ways to Motivate Your Employees

If you want to improve employee engagement, improved employee motivation is a good place to start. Motivating your employees is not the same as babysitting them. Employee motivation is also not about enticing them with gifts and prizes to inspire action. Motivating your employees is about shifting your organizational culture and making sure that the working environment is conducive to productivity. But where to start?

Let’s take a look at seven ways to motivate your employees more effectively:

1. Ensure that employees feel valued for their efforts
2. Align rewards and incentives to intrinsic motivators
3. Turn managers into coaches
4. Offer easily accessible learning and skills development opportunities
5. Cultivate a culture of mutual support
6. Enable open communication and information sharing
7. Create an enjoyable working environment

1. Ensure that employees feel valued for their efforts

In a study surveying 1200 employees across various industries in the United States, the majority of respondents (70%) reported that their most meaningful recognition had no dollar value. Recognition with “no dollar value”in this instance referred to receiving praise from peers, being recognized for specific work contributions, and receiving praise from managers, as opposed to rewards or gifts with a particular monetary value (e.g., gift cards or trophies). So, what we’re saying here is that you don’t need to spend a ton of money on recognition – simply make an effort to thank employees for a job done well.

2. Align rewards and incentives to employees’ intrinsic motivators

When employees are motivated to perform well by a dangling carrot of rewards alone, they aren’t likely to be motivated for long, and it’s unsustainable to boot. Recognition is a far more effective means of ensuring sustained motivation; receiving formal or informal recognition typically occurs as a result of excellent work and leverages employees’ internal impetus to do well.

Employees will be more inclined to work hard towards incentives they value; remember, not everyone is motivated by the same things in life. Thus,organizations will see better results when employees have a variety of incentive options from which to choose. (Also see: Employee Rewards: Give Your Employees What They Really Want)

3. Turn managers into coaches

The best managers are the ones who are able to not only coax the best performance from employees, but those who are able to spot potential in a staff member and assist them in developing further – which is to the benefit of the individual, company and improve employee engagement. Yes, managers are tasked with keeping their teams answerable for their work, to ensure that the correct processes are followed, and to put out fires; but a workplace where managers curb success through unnecessary gatekeeping can extinguish motivation rather than ignite it.

4. Offer easily accessible learning and skills development opportunities

Without easy access to resources to improve their skills or to gain a deeper understanding of their field and role, employees may become bored or experience their day-to-day work as monotonous or as a dead-end. Give your employees access to skills development opportunities, both work-related and in line with future skills, and allow them to create a learning path that fits with their career goals within the organization.

5. Cultivate a culture of mutual support

A culture of mutual support is cultivated by emphasizing the importance of teamwork rather than merely the performance of individuals alone. Motivate staff by recognizing excellent work produced by teams; this will lead to team- and organizational pride, which further turns employees into brand ambassadors.

6. Enable open communication and information sharing

Employees who feel disconnected from the companies for whom they work are far less likely to feel motivated and engaged at work as a lack of communication also curbs individual agency (the ability to carry on with work due to an informed understanding of the organizational goals etc.) as well as a sense of community (fostered through the ability to ask for help, receive feedback, and feel connected to colleagues even when working from different sites).

7. Create an enjoyable working environment

Having fun at work doesn’t have to mean “all play and no work”. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that an organization needs a pool table and nap pods to keep employees happy. An enjoyable working environment is simply one where staff are happy. Cultivate a company culture where individuals feel fulfilled by their work and opportunities, and for good measure, throw in both planned and unplanned occasions to get staff to unwind once in a while(e.g., birthday celebrations or surprize raffles).

Visit www.ezzely.com to see how we can help your company to motivate staff and keep them sustainably engaged at work.