Employee Motivation
Background –
- Comprehensive research has found that financial incentives are NOT the primary drivers of performance stretch.
- If money is not the main driver, then what is?
- How can your business develop a very cost effective employee motivation program that will improve performance?
Key Factors in Employee Motivation
- Motivated Staff improve Profits
- How motivated am I to working for and remaining in this business and for trying my best whilst I’m here?
- Motivational levels can be measured
- Individual or Group/Team engagement measures the level of commitment to a business, how hard they are likely to work and how long you are likely to retain people
Driving Performance and Retention through Employee Engagement
Whilst employees’ commitment to their manager is crucial to engagement, the manager is the most important as the enabler of employees’ commitment to their jobs, organisations and teams. Employee motivation is a combination of the following four elements: Stimulation, Relevance, Control and Recognition.
Stimulation and variety to gain and sustain interest and attention.
Relevance – What is the connection between what I do and organisational success? Is my contribution of value to the business?
Control – Do I feel competent and in control? My motivation and self esteem increases as I have more input to my work content and goals.
Recognition – fair monetary reward for work AND re-enforcement by other people results in a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of being valued.
The McKenzie Employee Motivation Map
McKenzie has developed a useful tool to identify an individual’s unique motivational drivers which covers around 150 drivers clustered into sub-groups such as financial, goal achievement, development, relationship with boss, job content, workplace, life place balancing. Some drivers are key indicators of employee motivation. For example:
Self motivation - Striving to improve or meet a standard of excellence
Commitment - Aligning with the goals of the group or organisation.
Initiative - Readiness to act on opportunities
Optimism - Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks
Employee retention is the other key factor in motivating people to stay in a business. Retention is tied to an employer providing their staff with great opportunities, a great company, great rewards, and a great place to work.