9 ways how to motivate employees in 2019
You don’t have to throw money away like a crazy
As an entrepreneur, you have to motivate people to do their work and consider your business as their business. Achieving this is not that easy, especially when you work with people that are not very young…
A study done by TinyPulse on 200.000 people discovered that money and benefits are not even in the top 5 things that motivate people. When asked “What motivates you to excel and go the extra mile at your organization?” almost 20% of the people responded that Camaraderie and the peer motivation is the most important thing that people appreciate in a job.
In the second place with 17% was the intrinsic desire to do a good job. This means that you have to pay close attention when you hire people. According to the Oxford dictionary, “intrinsic” means belonging naturally, essential, innate or native. This means that hiring the right people for the right job is very important when it comes to having self-motivating people. If you put a creative person do a lot of math and Excel sheet, he will probably hate his job or submit his resignation soon. Be sure to put people in the right seat and use their strengths in the best use of your company…
On the third place came feeling encouraged and recognized with 13%. When it comes to recognizing people you have to do it public. People love being acknowledged in front of others. These will activate a set of emotions that will make them always look for new ways to do their job better in order to get a new set of acknowledges…
The money and benefits actually came on the 7th place… What does this mean to you? It means that you have to read further to discover what you should to do to better motivate your workers…
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” - Jack Welch, Former Chairman & CEO of General Electric
9 key ways to better motivate employees in 2019
Now you have to pay close attention… I would also recommend you take notes because knowing these things, and actually implementing them in your business could have a significant impact on your company growth…
1. Create a great work environment…
Google was the first company to hire a 3 star Micheline chef to cook at their headquarter cafeteria. Google also allows employees to bring their dog to work. Twitter is holding meetings on the rooftop instead of close dark conference rooms. Chevron emphasizes health and wellness by not only giving people a gym membership but also owning the gyms and giving people a personal trainer that will keep them fit and well. Chevron also offers massages at work and focus on the mental aspect of their workers as well.
Now you will say that you can’t afford to do anything of the things I talked about above and you don’t have to. You don’t have to copy someone else. You have to design your own system. Maybe you take meetings in the park at a picnic, or you organize competitions at work or just take care of all the types of equipment to be updated and work properly. Maybe you order a cake when is someone birthday and organize a small 30 minutes party at lunch. There are multiple ways in which you can make your business a more pleasant place to be… You just have to use Google to search for examples and get inspired…
2. Be a people person and a good manager
Respect, honesty, support and clear communication are the foundation of any great relationship, no matter if this relationship is with a vendor, a business partner or an employee… You have to know when is time to push people in order to advance in their career and when is time to allow them some space. For example, if someone just discovered that his mother has cancer and is going to the hospital for investigations, be a human and allow that person to go. This kind of attitude is going to make you loved by your worker and make them feel appreciated. When they are at work they are going to be more productive because now they believe in you and your company.
As a leader of your organization, you have to learn how to be a good coach. If you never managed a team before it might pay off to go on Amazon and read some management books. I would start with “One Minute Manager” and go from there. If you become a good person to work for, you are going to build loyalty in your team and you will truly become a leader.
3. Reward people for doing a good job
People might come work for you for the money or the benefits, but at the end of the day, they remain in your organization because of the community, the appreciation they receive and the opportunity for growth. Starting an inventive program might prove a good thing to do. Compensate people for overtime or create a commission structure that rewards people for their well-done work.
You can even think of creating a bonus that is profit related. Let’s say that you want to achieve 10.000$ profit each week. You can create a bonus system that rewards people a part of everything that is done above that amount. Also if you do this, make sure you don’t give that money away only to sales or marketing because everyone in your company deserves a piece of it. If people are rewarded for their work, they will be more willing to do a good job and will be more motivated to stay with your organization.
Large organizations like Oracle or Adobe have large systems put in place that give workers the ability to buy shares of the company at a certain price. This gets people to involve in the future wellbeing of the company. Think about how you could implement something like that into your business.
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” — Andrew Carnegie
4. Allow people to explore new growth opportunities
Provide and build an environment where people can have access to growth materials. This very good especially in a startup where the business is expanding rapidly and people have to adapt in order to move the business forward. Having an organization that focuses on growth is a great motivator for people.
If you have an employee that comes to you and says that a certain course or book is going to help him become more productive be sure to allow him to do that on your business money. The best thing you could do now would be to empower that person to come back with an action list with the things he learned from the book or the course, what are the things he is going to implement in the business and if is appropriate allow that person to teach what he learned to his teammates.
A great motivator for people would be to get promoted for doing a good job. If you are opening a second location and have someone who proved himself to be very good at management and inventory, consider promoting that person to be the person who manages the second location on their own. This is going to entice others to strive for more and be more open to growth opportunities.
5. Don’t keep praise secret
When it comes to feedback there is a very simple rule. Negative feedback should always be done in private and positive feedback and praise should always be done in public. This is going to motivate your worker to strive and do things that attract your praise and positive feedback. When it comes to customer relations always give positive feedback when someone takes the extra mile to help a customer out. This means repeat business for you and this is essential in any organization.
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” -Sam Walton
6. Do share your business numbers with your employees
Yes, when you do that there are going to be people that become jealous of you. There are the people that must get off your bus called business. The people that need to stay on the bus are going to get more invested in your business. Sharing numbers with your workers on a daily basis is like looking at your children scorecard from time to time. Is just a checkup of the things you are doing good or bad. Not all the information needs to be share, but sales numbers or new versus old customers numbers are good motivators mostly for salespeople and customer relations people. This proves that they are doing a good job. If you teach your employees how to look at these numbers they are going to feel like they’re important and learn what they are doing right and where they have to improve…
7. Not everyone has to have a fixed schedule
The microprocessor has changed the way we learn, the way we get informed, the way we travel, and basically all areas of our lives. This also applies to the way we do business. Some people work better at home, some need to have someone check them out and need to come to a physical space. Give people the opportunity to work from home if they want. This can be applied to certain positions in your company and not everyone can work from home. If you have a physical store there is someone who has to be there in order to serve the customer. This might change in the future, but for now, having a robot sell your products in a physical location is still something very expensive.
Offer people the flexibility to choose where they work and they will become more productive.
8. Provide a healthy food option at work
Could a good healthy snack influence employee retention? You have to discover the answer to that quesiton. There are a lot of companies now that have a large variety of healthy food options that focus only on providing small and medium businesses with food options so that people don’t have to go look for something to eat at noon. You have to test this for yourself.
A survey done by Seamless discovered that almost 57% of the people asked to say that healthy food snacks make them feel more valued and appreciated at work. In the same survey, 38% of the people said that having a good variety of food snacks is making them recommend the businesses they are working in as being a good organization to work for.
Having snacks is also going to help people be more productive, but there is catch… If employees eat too much they are going to become tired because their bodies are consuming energy to digest the food. A good balance has to be put in place. Test this in your business and tell me your results in a comment below!
9. Listen to your workers
This might be the easiest point in this list but might be the most important one… Simply asking people what they want to make sure to have a 15–30 minutes chat once a year with each of your employees and discover what are their needs. Create a notebook with their ideas and if there are things that a large proportion of your workers want to find a way to implement them. This is going to make your people feel heard out and important. They will never want to leave your organization again…
I know this was a very long article and if you are reading this I want to congratulate you! Almost 50% of the people don’t spend that much time improving themselves! Great work!
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