Many managers are baffled when the idea of motivating employees comes up. They believe that their subordinates should be self-starters. They, at the thought of showing up at work and finding disinterested employees, cringe.
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.
Many employees have come to hate their jobs. Many just go through motions daily. They do just enough not to get fired. Lack of motivation is real. Nothing makes them more miserable than the thought of waking up the next day and going into that hell-hole called workplace.
This state of affairs can be very costly for businesses and families. It has been established many times that, billions of money is lost annually because of work-related stress. This is to some degree, heightened by the demands made by employers to employees in order to keep their ship afloat.
Gaining commitment, nurturing talent, and ensuring employee motivation and productivity requires open communication and trust between managers and staff. Below are a few ways managers can stimulate employee motivation:
1. Understand their behaviour
The one thing that cannot lie is human behavior. 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. Once the employee’s behavior can be understood and its underlying causes, chances for motivating such an employee can increase incredibly.
Insisting what you expect from your employees will only worsen the situation. It is essential to be on the lookout for the behavior of all organizational actors.
2. Be sure that people’s lower-level needs are met
It is an undeniable fact that, everyone is after joy in life including employees. People have various kinds of needs. Examples of lower-level needs are salary, job security, and working conditions. It is important that their needs are met, this will boost their morale and overall work attitude.
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. Develop trust
There is nothing that is as disheartening as having an unfaithful manager or employer. By simply giving your staff the opportunity to show that you can trust them is enough to increase employee motivation among them.
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. It is important to be truthful and instill the culture of trust if employees are to be motivated.
4. Listen carefully
In many areas of a manager’s job, from meetings and appraisals to telephone calls, listening plays a key role. People like to be listened to and not just heard. Listening encourages employee motivation and, therefore, benefits both you and your staff.
Make an effort to understand people’s attitudes by carefully listening and questioning and by giving them the opportunity to express themselves.
5. Build confidence
Most people suffer from insecurity at some point. The many kinds of anxiety that affect people in organizations can feed such insecurity, and insecurity impedes employee motivation. Some of the most successful businesses in the world have regular pep talks with their staff. Your antidote, therefore, is to build confidence by giving recognition, high-level tasks, and full information.
Some companies go as far as engaging services of motivational speakers. Sometimes they even have vacations where their staff can relax and have their perspectives set straight. 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.
it is also important to create a corporate culture that encourages networking between staff members. This can provide opportunities for mentorships, which boost employee motivation. Keep in mind that building rapport with your staff will effectively increase employee motivation.
7. Appraise to motivate
This has been used for quite some time now. 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.
Benefits received should be equivalent to the effort made. That is hard-working employees should receive salary increases and bonuses or any other additional benefits. This can be a game-changer. Realistic targets, positive feedback, and listening are key factors.
8. 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. Failure to involve employees in decision-making continues to undermine the profitability of many organizations. When people don’t get a chance to contribute in what’s been done, they’re likely not going to be very involved in ensuring the success of the company.
Take trouble to improve the employee’s understanding and to win their approval, as this will have a highly positive influence on performance and increasing employee motivation as well. Having their ideas incorporated into the larger strategic thinking ensures that they have a sense of ownership on what’s being done.
9. Delegate decisions
Although this must be done with great care, it motivates employees even better. 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.
By encouraging employees to choose their own working methods, make decisions, and giving them responsibility for meeting the agreed goals will encourage employee motivation among your staff.
10. 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.
Conclusion
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 your company’s productivity.
According to Simon Sinek, following The Golden Circle can work wonders. : “It can be used as a guide to vastly improving leadership, corporate culture, hiring, product development, sales, and marketing. It even explains loyalty and how to create enough momentum to turn an idea into a social movement”.
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.