Expressing gratitude It's easy to say thank you or give thanks. These simple words go a long way in motivating someone and showing appreciation. Another way to recognize good work is through extrinsic rewards, such as additional vacation days, coupons, or trips. This gives employees something to work for.
So you've hired great people. Now you have to make sure they stay. While, of course, money and benefits are important, one study found that they don't top the list of motivating factors. On the other hand, some of the most important factors used to be peer motivation (20%) and feeling encouraged and recognized (13%).
But how exactly can company leaders increase this motivation? To help answer this question, members of the Forbes Business Council shared their top 14 strategies for leaders looking to reinforce long-term employee engagement. Many companies try to motivate employees with outside benefits. Common benefits include stocks or stock options, salary increases, and performance-based cash bonuses. However, these traditional methods rank at the lower end of the scale, in terms of what employees consider to be the main motivators.
Keeping employees motivated, especially during difficult times, is an important part of your company's success. CEO John Foraker attributes the strong motivation of his employees to the fact that Annie's is a mission-driven company. If you're a business owner, manager, or supervisor, you know how important it is to have highly motivated workers. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs shows us that when people already have the basic needs of food and housing, they are not motivated so much by material benefits as by the higher needs of personal fulfillment and creativity.
The company has understood the reality that highly motivated, highly trained workers who have a common vision don't need to be micromanaged. By offering a clear and determined vision, company leaders can increase motivation and ensure employee engagement. In fact, 78% of employees say that the biggest motivational factor at work is recognition, not money. Active leaders who make an impact by leading in a way that generates results based on their examples offer the best opportunities to motivate others.
This encourages them to master different skill sets and tasks, which in turn increases their productivity, motivation, and experience. Defined as sleepwalking throughout their working day, unmotivated and unmotivated employees work less and at a lower level. In a survey, 90 percent of business leaders say that having highly engaged and motivated employees is essential to the success of their company. Group dissatisfaction and decreased motivation: Complaints, gossip, and negative assumptions about a company's management or owner can turn happy employees into unmotivated employees.
Forbes Business Council members share strategies for how leaders can increase employee motivation. Therefore, a combination of management practices, including talent recognition and management, incentive offers (not necessarily financial), opportunities to grow as an individual and as a team, and the projection of democratic leadership, will eventually keep your employees motivated.
