A Detailed Guide to Employee Motivation

A Detailed Guide to Employee Motivation
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One of the most important responsibilities of a manager is to motivate employees. But how do you keep your employees motivated ? There is no singular approach to motivating your workforce. A manager may have to exercise a range of techniques to maintain a desired level of motivation. And this can be one Herculean feat if you don’t know how to begin and go about it. So, here’s our collection of tips and strategies to help you ramp up your employee motivation efforts.

This guide on employee motivation covers all traditional motivation theories to the present-day best practices. Motivation promotes productivity and increases employee retention, making it a top priority for most managers. And this guide is all set to gear you up with practical and exciting ways to improve employees’ motivation by lifting their morale, increasing their satisfaction and offering them a better job experience.

Getting Familiar with Motivational Theories

Getting started without knowing the basics is never fruitful, so here are a couple of articles that will give you a quick run through the basic concepts of some of the widely used motivation theories. Instead of mere explanations of the theories, the information presented here is more inclined to help you make practical use of their concepts.

Boosting Employee Morale

Employee morale is an indicator of how happy your employees are working for you. Motivation and morale always go hand in hand; if you work on lifting employee morale your employees will automatically be more motivated to perform well and stick around. Making the job more meaningful, giving employees adequate authority and responsibility, and promoting innovation, creativity and growth are some of the ways to get the morale of your employees soaring. Let’s get you started with some ideas on how to boost the morale of your employees .

After you’re done learning about the methods and ideas to boost employee morale, there are two more important aspects that need your attention – how to trace the root cause of low employee morale and what factors can cause the employee morale to plummet.

Increasing Job Satisfaction

How satisfied your employees are in their jobs has a major bearing on their work performance and commitment. If a person is happy doing what he is doing, he will not easily want to shift to a different job. Also, if he loves doing what he is doing he will always be willing to put more effort into it. Job satisfaction motivates employees more than anything else. Today’s workforce isn’t willing to work just for salary and perks; they seek a more satisfying job experience as well. Learn about some of the basics concerning job satisfaction and employee motivation.

Moving on, let’s find out what can be done to make the jobs more satisfying for your employees. At this time we will talk only about how constructive changes can be made to the job, in order to increase employee satisfaction and to keep them motivated.

Job Rotation:

Job Rotation

Job Enrichment:

Job Enlargement:

Job Design:

Employee Empowerment:

Training and Development:

Motivating Employees Through Recognition, Rewards and Incentives

It’s human to expect credit and praise for one’s good work. Talking about employees and workplaces, every employee expects that his good performance is acknowledged, recognized and appreciated. Employee recognition brings in double benefits – first, the employees are happy and motivated; and second, it creates a healthy competitive environment, pushing the employees to improve their performance. The bigger question here is how to recognize employees, and here are some creative as well as budget-friendly ideas to get you started.

Employee recognition is indeed a great way to keep the employees motivated, but it has its disadvantages, too, and sometimes the recognition system can even backfire. Here’s more on what you need to keep in mind when developing an employee recognition system.

A letter of recognition or having a hall of fame may not be enough to boost employee performance. Add in some rewards or incentives along with the recognition and it will motivate your employees to give their 100% to the job. Even a kid works hard to score good grades if he is promised a reward; along the same lines an employee feels motivated to improve performance and accomplish goals if there is some reward or incentive waiting for him at the other end of the tunnel. Go on and give your employees some temptation to work harder.

Offering a Motivating Work Environment

An employee spends a major part of his day at the workplace, and if the workplace is stress filled, dull and boring the employee is less motivated to perform, or possibly even to continue working. Offer your employees a fun-filled and lively work environment and you’ll have a fully motivated workforce. You can incorporate a wellness program or even hold employee contests–several of these ideas are certain to work well for you.

Last Thoughts on Motivation

And finally, before we wind up this guide on employee motivation we have here some additional ideas to help you get more out of your employee motivation efforts. Keeping employees motivated will result in achievement for both you and them.

If you have more exciting ideas on employee motivation , we would love to hear them. Use the comment box below to share your ideas with us.

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