Motivation really enhances basic productivity, changes the employees’ attitude to work and increases the profitability of the company. We advise you the ways to increase motivation and improve the quality of work which we use.
1. Recognize that subordinates can be motivated by something not directly related to their work
Dynamic employees with significant growth potential are usually passionate about the sport, hobby or other activities unrelated to work. These external interests should not conflict with the work. You can use your employees’ desire to achieve high results in the area they are passionate about to stimulate their growth and motivation in the workplace.
Recognize that they are real people with their own interests. Help your employees in their activities and show interest in their achievements. Your positive attitude to the subordinate’s passion will necessarily affect his operation. Due to the support of management, this situation is doubly advantageous: the more success in life the employee achieves, the higher is the quality and productivity of his labor.
2. Teach the subordinates to measure the degree of success of the executed work
Employees who are constantly monitoring their activities are able to notice and document the growth of their own professionalism. They create estimation tables themselves and note their successes and failures better than the manager.
How to achieve this? Any objective of work can be measured in a simple scoring system. If the task does not imply the result in numerical form, create a scale for assessing productivity.
3. Track motivation
Managers of most organizations have no idea about the actual level of motivation of their subordinates. Researches of the employee job satisfaction conducted in companies do not include motivation assessment. If you start measuring motivation, you will likely learn to manage it. Having no data on the level of motivation, you will never be able to improve on this.
You should periodically measure the motivation of the employees. Let managers regularly monitor changes in the level of motivation of their subordinates. There are a lot of services that can help you to track workflow your employees and stay on top of company’s life.
4. Ask subordinates what do they want
Different workers have different goals and desires, and therefore they need different opportunities for work and professional growth. You can not motivate specific people by common programs. To increase motivation it is necessary to find an individual approach to each employee.
One way to do this is to delegate authority, goals, and tasks for each employee in the development of a certain plan or project. Another way is to give subordinates an opportunity to develop their own strategic objectives and plans.
5. Ask the employees about the results of their work
The more information, the higher is the motivation. That is the reason why a good leader is committed to making data exchange within the organization more intense. Try to talk less about yourself and ask the employees about their work.
Ask the subordinate about the executed work and concrete results. Such questions as “What results did your team reach yesterday?” or “How many calls have you been able to serve in the last hour?” stimulate the level of the employee’s self-awareness. And possession of information contributes to inner motivation.
6. Explain your subordinates an adopted reward system
Arbitrariness in the reward system leads to cynicism and does not increase motivation. If the new program is made out of thin air, the employees begin to feel that the managers do not respect them. Show respect to the employees and, if necessary, explain in detail the essence of the new reward system, its goals, and objectives. Give clear answers to the subordinates’ questions on how can the system of rewards affect their daily operations.
7. Strengthen interaction
In many organizations, managers and their employees are so busy that they rarely see each other. They do not have the possibility to communicate. To increase the intensity of contacts between the leaders of the organization and the staff it is useful, for example, to plan meetings and activities for the leaders and subordinates at one time and in one place. The work in the office should be organized so that the managers often interact with ordinary employees. You can not increase the motivation of a person whom you rarely see.
8. Create a bank of ideas
What do your subordinates think about? They may have good ideas, but most of the staff are absolutely sure that nobody’s interested in their ideas. However, most managers would not mind if the subordinates share their thoughts and fresh ideas with them, managers are simply bad at asking. Most often they interrupt the subordinate or reject his offer. Such leaders immediately deprive workers of confidence and can not achieve their goals.
Can we avoid this? The easiest way to solve this problem is to make a special notebook, folder, file, mailbox, etc. and put there the ideas of subordinates. The leaders who fill at least a page of such a notebook a day, quickly develop the ability to listen to workers carefully.
9. Motivate by knowledge
To achieve excellence in any job an employee should strive to become the best in the field. A person fascinated by studying will necessarily succeed in the office and develop complementary skills. So you can use the knowledge and training as a reward and a motivating factor.
How to do it better? There are many ways. Give the employees who have achieved significant results in their work for the possibility to get additional training. Take advantage of additional knowledge to inspire employees to continue their education. Suggest a subordinate to choose a training course and give him the opportunity of free studies. Knowledge is a powerful motivating factor; it costs surprisingly cheap compared with its true value.
10. Reward individuals for the general performance of the group
In the era of teamwork people often feel that their individual merits remain underestimated. Companies are more willing to acknowledge the success of the group as a whole. However, the head of the team should also encourage its members at the individual level. It is the only way to increase personal motivation.
This can be achieved, for example, by conducting a weekly on the major successes of individual team members. With these reports, you will be able to generalize the results at the end of the reporting period.
11. Support a positive exchange of information between the subordinates
Personal positive assessment of work is an effective motivating factor. The corporate culture supporting the desire to give each other positive assessment on the results of each completed task increases motivation and productivity.
How to achieve this in practice? First, you can develop a culture of mutual recognition among the subordinates by developing a reward system based on the results of the poll of the colleagues. When employees begin to recognize and reward each other’s successes, their level of motivation will increase significantly.
12. Find out if subordinate likes his work
The motivation of an employee who does not like his work does not give any results. However, facing the lack of subordinates’ motivation many managers focus on the work they do, rather than on people. Changes in parameters of labor may lead to a significant increase in the employee’s motivation.
First, make sure that the tasks correspond to the qualifications of an employee. Otherwise, divide the work into a series of small but significant tasks or allocate more time to the explanation and support. If you want to achieve greater motivation and productivity, you’ll have to make some changes in the majority of tasks that you give to your subordinates.
13. Seek out people with inner motivation
When companies hire employees, they are mostly interested in their level of competence, rather than their attitude to work. However, the attitude determines the motivation, which in turn has a major impact on the employee’s commitment to the training and quality of his work. Why not start selecting employees with high inner motivation? It is much easier to train a motivated employee than to motivate a qualified professional.
Hire the specialists who have previously demonstrated a high level of optimism, enthusiasm, motivation to work and commitment to the development. The professionally conducted interview or recommendations from previous jobs will help you to detect such an attitude.
14. Make rewards of the subordinates smaller, but more frequent
In most companies, there is a common practice to reward the employees on the results of a project, quarter or year. The ceremonies of rewarding the best employees are rare and attract the attention of all the employees. But usually, they affect motivation not so good as smaller but more frequent rewards.
Plan your expenses on rewards to reward the subordinates more frequently. As a result, the connection between the work and the result will become more apparent to them. The employees will feel that they have more chances to succeed. This will allow you to attract the attention of staff to a gradual improvement in the quality of work, and not to the reward itself.
15. Motivation by control
Many leaders are convinced that control is their prerogative. But in reality, control has a motivational impact. The basic idea of this method is to give the employees an opportunity to make decisions on all the matters that do not require centralized control.
Allow the staff to make changes in any aspect of their work environment, which does not pose a threat to the safety and image of the organization. For example, the employees of the delivery service of Amazon.com are allowed to walk in the headphones while working and listen to the music of their choice. In many firms, employees are allowed to decorate their workplaces. Providing the employees more independence you can achieve an increase in motivation.
16. Ask questions involving detailed answers
Most of surveys and researches include common questions that require answers such as “yes” or “no”. Such questions are processed to get the numerical result of the research. However, in ordinary conversation the questions that have a specified number of answers seem rude, they manifest your desire to control your interlocutor. They signal that you are not interested in the answer or someone else’s opinion. However, the managers constantly use the questions requiring an unequivocal positive or negative responses in the conversation with subordinates. Try to ask questions that involve a detailed answer and the subordinates will feel that you respect them. As a result, their motivation will increase significantly.
Try to ask questions that begin with “Why” and “How”, “Could you tell me please…”, “What do you mean…”. And do not forget to listen to the answer.
17. Make the tasks clearer
It should be clear for the employee, what he does, why he does it, and how well he performs his work. The researches have shown that the clarity of the tasks affects the motivation of the sales staff better than their experience or the amount of commission. This principle applies to other specialties.
You can achieve great results if you help the employees to see their personal contribution to the whole project and if the employees are sure that their work is evaluated regularly, promptly and accurately.