The right motivation at work
Motivation (in psychology) is a state of mind when a person's capacities are triggered towards achieving a goal. You cannot directly observe or measure the degree of motivation in a person. It depends on how a person resonates with the environment (physical and abstract) surrounding them. If you see yourself as unlikely to achieve your goal, in most cases, you will lose motivation. You need to take actions that can lead you to pursue a goal or avoid a negative state.
The motivation among employees is crucial for the business of every company. Employee's motivation involves all actions of the company (or their superiors) with the aim of creating a comfortable environment for your employees. It is necessary to constantly increase employee's motivation with certain actions in order to have constant growth on the market.
According to Bob Nelson, you need to work on the relationship between you and your employees to make workspace around them comfortable. There are many ways how you can achieve this. In the text below, we will present some of those ways (usually used ways to increase motivation) that have also produced positive results in our company.
Lead with vision / Set goals
As the leader on a project (or a company), it is essential to show that you have a vision and set clear goals. If employees see that all their efforts have been in vain, usually they won't be motivated enough. The output that you can expect in these situations is superficial or average. From the very beginning, in our company, employees are familiar with the vision and goal that they need to achieve. With this approach, we achieve that our employees exceed expectations and goals with the quality and dedicated work. In these situations, given tasks are done before the deadline.
Increase commitment
Motivating employees with increasing commitment can have a positive and negative influence on them. You need to know what kind of environment your every employee works better at. Some employees accomplish better results if they are forced from their comfort zone. But, if the employee's interest isn't compliant with new commitments, the degree of motivation will decrease. If they are quite interested in new commitments, they will put their best effort in new tasks.
Improve efficiency
In order to increase productivity and improve efficiency of employees, they need to have a good balance between the ability to perform and willingness to finish the given tasks. In most cases, the level of employee's efficiency is not only based on qualifications and abilities, but it also depends on how your employees or team performs.
Work-Life balance
Today, this is a big deal for employees. As mentioned above, satisfied employees, mean satisfied customers, so it is necessary to produce a comfortable environment for our employees. Employees should feel at home. Before making some grand plans, it is necessary to take a step back and find out what employees mean by their work-life balance. We were able to create a balance between work and personal life with some actions, such as:
- Employee's health and family come first.
- Create a comfortable workspace
- Flexible work schedule
- They can work from home on some days.
- They can set their days off.
- Talking to employees and finding a solution if they have a problem that bothers them.
If you achieve this, you will increase employee's efficiency and get better output from their work.
Employees satisfaction
Apart from the above, there are other ways to improve employee satisfaction and motivation, such as:
- Promote better communication - Creating positive communication among employees (or employees and superior) is the simplest way to raise the level of motivation. Constructive and good communication is based on arguments. If they bring in too many emotions, they can make communication too personally. Employees need to know that they will receive constructive and honest feedback for their efforts.
- Invest in employees - It is essential to enable employees to refine their skills and knowledge. With this approach, as a superior, you achieve dynamism in a workplace, increase motivation, and break down business monotony. Output results will be better than you expect because employees will repay what you invest in them through excellent work.
- Give them autonomy - Giving autonomy to your employees or a team shows that you trust them. This will create a strong emotional bond between employees and the superior, resulting in a better commitment to work. It will enable employees or the team to take pride in their work and finish it as soon as it is possible.
- Find out what makes them tick - Each employee is unique in different stages of life. Some achieve better results when they are forced out of their comfort zone while others prefer the safety of the familiar environment. As a superior, it is necessary to find out what makes them tick and align their personal and professional needs with those of the company.
- Reward them - Employees need someone to praise and reward them for a job well done. Public praise and rewards in front of other employees can increase self-esteem in employees and productivity for ongoing tasks. Raising salaries and promoting employees is the most common way to reward employees, but there are other ways to reward, like awarding the best employee of the month, rewarding with plaques and medals, etc.
Celebrate wins
Nowadays, it has become customary to celebrate with other employees after the successful project. Celebrations are required to motivate employees and keep positive vibes for future projects. Also, it makes a strong bond of trust and respect among them, creating a homogeneous and unified team. Our company also follows today's trends. In order to boost employee's productivity and satisfaction, we established a happy hour (the last working hour on Friday) to show respect and gratitude to employees for their dedicated work during that week.
Conclusion
Having highly motivated employees to carry a whole company's business is a crucial component of its success on the market. Having all that in mind and applying all procedures outlined above, we have been able to raise the level of employee motivation. As Anne M. Muncahy said, we are guided by the saying: "Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.".
If you have any further questions, or simply need help by the analysis to make your decision, please contact us. We offer you a free consulting.
