22 ways of Motivation and retention of employees

January 10, 2010

By Ridhima

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. Gaining commitment, nurturing talent, and ensuring employee motivation and productivity require open communication and trust between managers and staff.

1. Understand their 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. Insisting what you expect from your employees will only worsen the situation.

2. Be sure that people’s lower-level needs are met.

People have various kinds of needs. Examples of lower-level needs are salary, job security, and working conditions. In order to increase employee motivation, you have to meet these basic needs. Consequently, 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. 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.

4. Listen carefully

In many areas of a manager’s job, from meetings and appraisals to telephone calls, listening plays a key role. Listening encourages employee motivation and, therefore, benefits both you and your staff. So make an effort to understand people’s attitudes by careful listening and questioning and by giving them the opportunity to express themselves.

5. Build confidence

Most people suffer from insecurity at some time. The many kinds of anxiety that affect people in organizations can feed such insecurity, and insecurity impedes employee motivation. Your antidote, therefore, is to build confidence by giving recognition, high-level tasks, and full information. 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 on an informal basis. Keep in mind that building rapport with your staff will effectively increase employee motivation.

7. 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. Take trouble to improve their understanding and to win their approval, as this will have a highly positive influence on performance and increasing employee motivation as well.

8. Develop trust

The quality and style of leadership are major factors in gaining employee motivation and trust. 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. By simply giving your staff the opportunity to show that you can trust them is enough to increase employee motivation among them.

9. Delegate decisions

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. Also, because the decision is taken nearer to the point of action, it is more likely to be correct. Consequently, by encouraging them to choose their own working methods, make decisions, and giving them responsibility for meeting the agreed goal will encourage employee motivation among your staff.

10. Appraising to motivate

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. Realistic targets, positive feedback, and listening are key factors.

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 you company’s productivity. 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.

11. Take Care of the Little Things to Motivate Others

Doing the little things well will show that you respect your employees. Making sure you are on time for meetings, saying “good morning” and “thank-you,” and returning phone calls and e-mails in a timely manner goes a long way to showing your employees that you care during chaotic times.

12. Be an Active Listener to Motivate Others

Recent research stated that the average supervisor or manager only invests two hours per year applying “pure listening” skills. Pure listening is when you are listening to your employee you are not:

§ Multitasking

§ Ordering your lunch

§ Watching people walk by your office.

§ Answering telephone calls

§ Setting up appointments

To be a pure listener you must be an active listener. Good managers do more than pay attention. They genuinely care about people and never talk down to them. They ask their employees about their goals and dreams, their past achievement, their concerns and challenges during this chaotic time. They listen with their hearts and minds. They respect the employee’s thoughts and opinions. They realize that the employees sometimes have the best answer for achieving more through chaos.

13. Walk Your Talk to Motivate Others

Leading through example is a brilliant trait of leadership and will be necessary to help motivate staff in a recession environment. Simply do as you say and behave as you would wish your staff to behave, and soon you will have effectively changed the culture of your business in a small but useful way. How you wish your employees to behave is up to you!

If you expect your employees to arrive early, then you arrive early. If you expect your employees to keep their promises, you keep your promises. If you want your employees to keep to high standards, you keep to high standards.

Your employees are watching you even when you don’t think they are watching you. So set the tone. Once you walk through the doors of your organization make sure you are positive and upbeat if you expect your employees to be positive and upbeat.

The key to motivating an individual is to speak in terms of that employee’s deepest wishes and desires. If the employee wishes to own their business then you must remind them that by completing the task you have given them, you will be improving their skills that will allow them to pursue their dream in time. This is a brilliant tip that if used on a personal level – can inspire whole teams of workers, one individual at a time

14. Let People Know They Make a Difference to Motivate Others

At the top of many lists of what motivates employees, more than money, is knowing that they make a difference at work. One of the most powerful methods of letting your employees know they make is difference is…praise (Go to article Appreciate to Motivate to learn how). The praise should relate to how the employee helps achieve the overall mission of the organization.

15. Communicate Clearly to Motivate Others

Communicate so that others understand what you want to achieve. Adapt your communication to the audience you are speaking. Constantly communicate your vision and goals so that there are no misunderstandings. The clearer the vision, the clearer the communication, the clearer the opportunity for success.

16. Help Employees Succeed to Motivate Others

People go to work to succeed, not fail. It is your job to understand your employee’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can put them in the best position to succeed. If, for example, you find out that an employee is lacking in a certain skill set to succeed during a change then provide the coaching and training to make them and your organization successful. The best managers minimize or eliminate their employees weaknesses and while building on their strengths. Remove any and all barriers to success.

17. Focus Your Team on the Goal to Motivate Others

Focus your employees on the end result, the overall team goal. Once you successful communicate this your team will band together to defeat any obstacles that get in the way.

18. Create High Standards to Motivate Others

High-performance organizations set high standards for their people. Employees want to know what is expected of them, how their performance is measured, and what rewards they can expect when they exceed the standard. Make sure the standards are consistently applied to each employee. Make sure each employee understands how the standards are measured so that they know how to reach it. As each plateau is reached, set new goals.

19. Help Your Employees Compete and Win to Motivate Others

Develop goals that help all your employees excel. Workers are inherently competitive and you can take advantage of this by setting tough competitive challenges to inspire your workers. Challenges are easy to set as long as you follow two rules:

- Don’t let employees compete against those in their own team
- Give employees as much support as they need to complete their challenge, don’t leave them alone to try and tackle a tough goal.

20. Reward Outstanding Achievement to Motivate Others

Find ways to recognize your achievers in a public way. The more you reward employees for excellent achievement, the more you receive more of the same behavior. Make sure you are consistent with the way you contribute rewards to your employees. Very important, make use you communicate exactly why the employee is being rewarded. And last, reward as soon as possible to the action.

Some of the ways you can show recognition are:

§ Idea board

§ Initiative Board

§ Star Spotlight or awards d

§ Certificates

§ Gift cards

§ Say thank-you

§ Lunch

21. Celebrate length of service, birthdays etc.

It’s always a big moment for an employee who has been at your company for 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, etc. Make sure that you announce and celebrate these moments. Birthdays of course.

22. Offer in House training

Utilize senior staff to establish training sessions to help your employees improve their skills and they will ultimately perform better at their jobs.

23. Encourage vacations and weekends free

The last thing you want right now is burnt out employees. Make sure your employees feel comfortable when they are taking time off!