HOW TO KEEP EMPLOYEES MOTIVATED, EVERY SINGLE DAY

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Buck Stevens
6 years ago
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2 HOW TO KEEP EMPLOYEES MOTIVATED, EVERY SINGLE DAY P L A N N I N G, C O N D U C T I N G, A N D G E T T I N G R E S U L T S Through my own research and a LOT of trial and error, I have identified 16 keys to motivate your employees. In this report, I will share these techniques so that you can adapt as many of them as possible in your business. 1. Help Employees Feel They Are Doing Something Meaningful A recent survey asked the question, What motivates you at work? The result -- doing something meaningful is more important than money and recognition to your employees. Twenty nine percent of the employees responded that doing something meaningful was the most motivating thing about work. Money motivated 25% and recognition 17%. So, the #1 way to motivate your team - your employees, is to make them feel that they are doing something meaningful. Now, clearly, if your vision is to alleviate poverty like Kiva does, getting your employees to feel like they are doing something meaningful is pretty easy, but what about for the typical for-profit company? This too is relatively straightforward; as already discussed, by establishing your company s vision and goals, and particularly involving your employees in creating them, they will be motivated to achieve them and feel that they are doing something meaningful. So be sure to involve your employees in creating your company s vision (with your guidance of course) and make them a part of establishing the goals in your business plan. 2. Effectively Communicate and Share Information As discussed, all employees must clearly understand and support the company's vision, values, strategy, plans and goals. You also need to consistently share new information so that your employees can make good decisions. With regards to goals, you must share how the organization is progressing towards achieving them. By setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and continuously posting KPI results (at least on a monthly basis) you will achieve this. Page 1

3 The best example that I've ever seen regarding how to communicate the results of goals and objectives was when I was in third grade. At my elementary school, they did a canned food drive. The school stated that our goal was to collect somewhere around 1,000 cans of food. Every day, students would bring in cans of food and someone would count them. The school posted a chart in the front hallway which showed our progress. Every day, we could easily see how close we were getting to the goal, which inspired each of us to go home and bring in more canned food until we collectively reached it. As simple as it sounds, this chart was a highly effective way of communicating the results of our goal and our progress towards achieving it. Yet, few companies use such a proven mechanism. Also, in terms of effectively communicating and sharing information, you need to acknowledge the contributions of those who helped the company achieve its goals. Appreciation keeps your team motivated, so definitely, acknowledge the players' or your employees' contributions to achieving your goals. 3. Give Employees Clear Job Descriptions And Accountability It is critical that you give your employees clear job descriptions and accountability. Just stating the responsibilities of a role is not enough. Rather, you need to specify the expected results and tasks. For example, while the Customer Service Manager s role might be to handle all inbound customer service calls, their expected results might be to answer all calls within 15 seconds or less, resulting in 90% customer satisfaction in telephone follow-up service. Only by specifying roles and expected results/accountability can you get the results that you'd like. One of my favorite stories regarding an employee really understanding not just their job description but their total accountability was told to me in a presentation by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Hsieh told the story about a customer who purchased a new pair of boots for her husband. It's a very sad story in that the boots arrived the day after the husband unfortunately died in a car accident. And so the woman called Zappos and wanted to return the shoes. The Zappos customer service representative of course accepted the return right away. And not only that The Zappos customer service representative sent condolence flowers to the woman who had purchased the shoes. And interestingly, at the funeral, the woman actually mentioned and told that story about Zappos. Obviously, Zappos created a customer for life in doing that because the employee had a very clear job description and a very clear decision-making authority. and understood the values of the organization, like we discussed earlier, and then made the right decision. Page 2

4 4. Give & Receive Ongoing Performance Feedback You must give positive feedback to your employees. You cannot just comment when things go wrong, as most leaders and managers try to do. You need to provide feedback and comments when things go right too. Likewise, when things do go wrong, don't blame your employees. You want to replace who questions with how questions. For example, rather than saying, Who screwed this up? say, How could we improve this process or avoid this in the future? Official employment performance reviews are critical techniques that you as a leader can use to maximize the productivity and performance of your employees. They are discussed in more detail later in this Chapter. 5. Have and Show Faith and Trust in Your Team Most of us, as human beings, have relatively fragile self-esteem. That being said, if you don't believe your employees can do something, then they won't believe they can either and they won t achieve success. You must have faith in them and you need to help build up their self-esteem. To achieve this, let your employees make decisions. Let them take ownership of challenging projects and determine how to complete them. You need to let them fail at times and not get mad about it. You see, the reason why most people have low self-esteem is that they did something wrong at one point in their life and were told that they messed up or weren t very good at something. Sadly, many of these events happened early in your employees lives. So, you need to let your employees fail at times, not get mad at them and let them know that they can do it. Give second chances. Importantly, your team needs to know that you believe in them. You need to emphasize their strengths. You need to praise them often. You do this to give them confidence and to build their self-esteem. 6. Listen To, Focus on & Respect Your Employees Needs In leadership, listening is more important than speaking. I love the quote, Questions unite. Answers divide. By asking questions of your team, you get them to participate, rather than dictating the answers. In Stephen Covey's acclaimed book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of his seven habits is, Seek first to understand than to be understood. The key point is to not assume that you know the answers. Listen. Always try to understand what other people want or need before you begin to outline your own objectives. You need to stop thinking too much about how you feel and rather on how your employees feel. Page 3

5 What are your employees' concerns? What do they like? What do they dislike? The more you are able to focus on your team and treat them well, the more motivated your team will be and the better they will perform. 7. Provide Recognition To Worthy Employees Recognition is an amazing motivator. Two gentlemen by the name of Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton authored a book called The Carrot Principle. In it, they discuss a study they conducted involving over 200,000 employees over a 10-year period. Their study showed that the key characteristic of the most successful managers is that they provide their employees with frequent and effective recognition. In fact, they found that significantly better business results were realized when managers offered employees recognition in the form of constructive praise, more so than monetary rewards. By giving employees non-monetary rewards as recognition, organizations receive better performance than when they gave employees monetary rewards like bonuses and cash. 8. Provide Fair Compensation & Pay For The Performance You Seek While I just mentioned that recognition is the most important way to motivate your employees, monetary payment is still critical in motivating and satisfying them. The keys to monetary payments are as follows. First, pay a wage that employees believe is fair compensation. And second, whenever possible, pay for performance. This does not mean 100% contingent compensation. What this means is setting expectations for base pays and also having bonuses and clearly defining success. In this way, employees strive to achieve the goals you have outlined. 9. Foster Innovation Effective leaders seek new ideas from their employees. Ask your employees for their opinions and ideas. Nothing is more motivating than working on an idea that you developed, or an idea that was developed by one of your teammates. Importantly, the vast majority of innovations come from the front line. They come from your front line employees that are manufacturing, that are interfacing with customers, etc. Innovation, as such, must be encouraged. And it s a win-win. Employees enjoy coming up with new ideas. They benefit and you benefit from implementing on the ideas. Plus, employees really like and are motivated by the simple fact that management is listening to them. A simple suggestion box can be very, very effective with the proper communication. Be very clear on the goal(s) of the suggestions box. Post it both on the box and share it verbally with your team. Page 4

6 10. Establish Company Policies That Are Fair And Support The Company s Goals By establishing company policies that are fair and support the company's goals, you can further motivate your employees. For example, clearly you cannot treat going to a seminar as a personal day if you want to encourage continuous learning. Rather, make sure your policies and practices encourage employee feedback, collaboration, decision-making, etc. 11. Get Ongoing Input From Employees As discussed previously, invite your employees to help set goals. Invite them to help set plans so they really buy into them. Then, on an on-going basis, seek employee input on key decisions and plans. Understand that you as the leader will make the ultimate decisions and plans. But if you are able to solicit feedback from your team, even if you don't follow their advice, the very act of soliciting their feedback will give you more information and ideas and will make them feel involved. 12. Manage But Don t Micro-Manage Employees do not like to be micromanaged. It's disempowering. However, you can check in versus checking up on your employees. Remembers, employees can't grow and they can't gain new skills if they're being micromanaged and told exactly what to do. 13. Encourage team-work While every employee should have specific tasks they are responsible for, having employees work in formal or even in-formal teams will further motivate them. Being part of a cohesive team fosters a sense of belonging and community that will allow you to get the most from your employees. 14. Modify your management approach for different types of employees Great leaders use multiple management approaches depending on the employee. Some employees may need or desire more handholding and coaching, some may need less. Think about each key employee and determine the best way to lead them. Clearly, a new employee is going to need more handholding and an older, superstar employee may just want you to check in once in a while. Page 5

7 15. Give Employees Opportunities for Personal Growth Encourage employees in your organization to gain new skills. People with skills and expertise take more pride in their jobs. You want to make sure that your employees feel that they are gaining skills and using their skills. So, be sure to provide on-the-job training and the ability for your employees to gain new skills. Exercise#1: Choose 3 of steps 1 to 15 to implement 1. Exercise Chosen Why Did You Choose This? Date to Implement Fire people when needed The final technique for motivating your team is to fire people when needed. Underperformers can kill an organization. They can become cancers. As others see them getting away with underperformance, they too start to underperform. Firing, as long as you explain to your team why people were fired, can actually motivate your employees. Exercise #2: Use the table below to stack rank your employees in several categories. Spot 1 is for the employee who is best in this category all the way down to the worse performer in that category. If you have many employees, use the table to rank your bottom 10. Rank Punctuality and Attendance Positive Attitude Understands Company Goals Cares about Company Goals Goes Above and Beyond Last Evaluation Score Page 6

8 People who are the bottom of the list in any category may need a coaching session to improve their performance. One person appearing at the bottom of multiple categories may need formal discipline or termination. Remember, when considering disciplinary action or terminating an employee, always follow HR and Regulatory guidelines that apply to your industry and State. These16 steps will help you manage employees in a manner that makes them enthusiastic about contributing to the growth of your company. By using the steps provided, you will implement proven techniques that foster loyalty, improve performance and very likely reduce or eliminate employee complaints and grievances. You will create a healthy work environment in which all resources are collaborating to achieve known strategic goals. Page 7

6 Managing performance

SECTION 6 Managing performance It can be a rewarding experience to lead a team when each individual is contributing to the success of the whole team. However, difficult challenges facing a line manager