Motivating Employees To Do Their Best

If you’re an employer, you already know that motivation is the key to your success. By being able to motivate your employees, you will not only see more productivity, but you’ll also have a lower turnover rate and happier employees overall. But how can you motivate a group of people, all with different goals and dreams? That’s the question most employers don’t ask – and that’s also the reason why so many employers fail in creating a strong workforce. Here’s what you can do.

Realize that Everyone’s Motivations Are Different

When you try to pigeonhole people into behaving in one way, you are going to be wrong more often than you will be right. Instead of taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach, you need to begin looking at your employees as individuals. You may want to start this process by sitting down with each employee to see what their goals are in their job. You will be surprised at the myriad of answers you receive as well as the wealth of honesty you will get when you ask this simple question. Too often, employees don’t feel like they have a goal aside from what their boss tells them, so hearing that you are interested in what they think.

Taking Action on These Answers

Once you determine the motivations of everyone, you will need to draw up a plan to see what will work for each employee. The good news is that your employee probably already has an idea of what will work for them in terms of motivating them – money, more responsibility, a promotion, etc. They need to know their options.  By creating a plan to get them to these goals, you will create an instantly motivating system for them to use.

Of course, if your employees have no idea what will motivate them, you will need to work a little harder. You might want to encourage your employees to focus on the work they are doing and slowly making it better each week. This is going to vary greatly on the kind of work that you do and what it takes to make that work successful. For example, if producing a certain number of something is your business’ goal, setting smaller goalposts for employees and rewarding them on going past these goals is going to work for a quantity driven business.

In a quality driven business, you will need to create a system in which employees are given specific feedback on their work so that they can make improvements that are specific to the work they do. When work is done well, rewarding them can help to motivate them – even if it’s simply an acknowledgement on email to the entire company.

Finding out what makes your employees tick is the secret to motivating them. Once you have that down, your business will be more successful for it, your employees will get what they want, you will get what you want as a manager, and problems will be minimal.

Doesn’t that sound like a place where you’d like to work?