These five essential tips will help you enhance employee motivation.
Working in any industry is all about how productive the workforce is? And productivity can be directly linked to motivation. The more motivated the workforce, the more productive they are. When workers feel engaged, they are more likely to work harder for the good of the company, because they can see first-hand what their contributions mean to its success.
In addition to being more productive, these employees consistently generate higher-quality results and this in turn also reduces the attrition and increases profits.
Leaders play the most important role in motivating the employees. Here are five proven tips.
Management expert Daniel Pink in his book ‘The Surprising Truth About What motivates Us’ focuses on the importance and effectiveness of three important elements of motivation at work viz. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.
He argues that financial rewards are effective in motivating the employees only if the task at hand is very rudimentary. This is called the traditional carrot and stick approach or the ‘external’ source of motivation. However, the minute it becomes more than rudimentary and involves any more intellectual skills or are even slightly cognitively challenging, financial rewards are no longer effective. In fact they may lead to complacency and deteriorate performance.
However, on the other hand once the employers have paid their employees enough to keep the financial worries off their mind, once the employees believe they are being paid fairly enough, then they become much more motivated by intrinsic elements, and look for more from their work besides money.
No time is the right time to motivate.
Good leaders never wait for the right time to motivate their team mates. For them, motivating their team is a continuous process. Motivation does not work in a sporadic manner but needs to be an ongoing force for the team. Employees who are satisfied with their work have a major impact on the growth and success of your company, while, disengaged employees can have a negative impact on your organization’s ability to become or remain an industry leader. In fact, experts claim that a disengaged workforce can cost an organization trillions of rupees.
Give the employees the freedom they deserve:
Though it may sound quite contrary to the traditional view of the management which prefers that the employees ‘comply’ to the rules set down by them, research shows that employees when given the freedom to choose how they would like to work, actually have been observed to perform better.
Once the task is delegated to the employee, he/she is found to prefer that he/she be given the autonomy to choose how to work on the task as long as they ensure timely completion of task. A task is best completed when the employee is engaged in the task. The more complex the task, the deeper the level of engagement desired. This engagement happens when the employee enjoys the autonomy to choose the four Ts viz. time technique team and task. Freedom in these areas to the employee to do their own things seems to lead to more creativity and innovation. A very ideal example is that of Google which has allowed developers to pursue individual projects and a result of this autonomy, Google has in turn benefitted from numerous creative product ideas. Flexible working hours, flexibility to work from home and the flexibility to choose their own team etc. could be other forms of autonomy that could be offered.
Make your organization a learning organization:
Identifying and developing talent from within the organization are ideal ways for the company to be future ready. In an organization where the employees are continuously offered opportunities to learn and grow, the employees are found to be more engaged and motivated. It is often faster and more effective to promote from within your own ranks than to search for new talent outside your organization. When employees learn and grow, the organization grows with them. Opportunities to learn will also help create a deep connection between the employee and the organization and therefore they are likely to feel more passionate about their work.
When employees stop learning, they stop growing and start stagnating which can prove to be very detrimental to the organization. This stagnation spreads negativity among employees which in turn slows down productivity.
Allow opportunities for soul-satisfaction:
Every employee wants not just monetary benefits from his/her work but also some heart-felt satisfaction of doing something meaningful in life and more so at their workplace. They would like to have a clear sense of purpose in life. They have an in built desire to do things in service of something larger than themselves or their routine work.. People are wired to want to do things that matter, where they feel they can contribute meaningfully. They are more often than not intrinsically motivated to ‘make a difference’ rather than just work for profit maximization.
People want to make a difference at their work place and similarly they ‘want to matter’. Organizations need to start creating a sense of purpose in the employees by first ensuring that the employees have clarity regarding the goals and the mission of the organization. The employees will also need to know how their role and work matches with that. This clarity can lead to a clarity regarding how they can contribute meaningfully in their role while remaining aligned to the goals and mission of the organization and go on to make a meaningful contribution to or ‘matter’ to the organization.
They need to get better and better at what they do:
Most employees have the ingrained desire to become better and better at what really matters. A sense of satisfaction from personal achievement and progress gives employees a sense of tremendous satisfaction. Allowing the employees to enjoy a sense of progress at work contribute to their inner drive.
The employees who are disengaged, are not provided with the opportunities to become better and better or gain mastery over their work or subject tend to stagnate and get bored. This again leads to them losing their motivation. This also often pulls down the overall morale of all the employees and the organization in turn.
Good managers are known to motivate their employees by raising the bar of the expected performance and challenging them on a continuous basis. Good managers never allow their team members to get into their comfort zone and will time and again pull them out of it by throwing at them tasks which are slightly of the next level, thereby raising the bar. The tasks are neither too easy for them nor too difficult. These tasks compel them to stretch their limits and achieve more thus enabling them to gain mastery over their subject or tasks.
As long as the employees are extrinsically motivated they will work only at a transactional level, on a carrot and stick principle. Whereas, when the employees are intrinsically motivated, they tend to be highly engaged and motivated.
Now it is upto the managers to decide what they want. An extrinsically motivated staff or an engaged and intrinsically motivated work force!