How to increase employee motivation

Are you wondering how to reach your employees potential by motivating and inspiring them?

It is important that as leaders, that we develop and get the best out of our employees, this all comes down to your leadership capabilities and how well you motivate your team members.

It’s the job of the manager not to light the fire of motivation, but to create an environment to let each person’s personal spark of motivation blaze.

–          Frederick Herzburg

We are all motivated in different ways, depending on what inspires us to achieve, that inner need or desire. The question is what motivates employees and makes them want to develop their abilities in your organisation?

So, what exactly is motivation?

Motivation is the process of encouraging an individual’s actions to accomplish goals or targets, motivation can come from one’s self or another individual.

Some ways you can instantly know that you have a motivated workforce already;

• Staff are putting in that something extra into their work and wanting to go that extra mile.
• Your staff retention level is high, resulting in employees wanting to stay within the company.
• Employees take pride in their professionalism and day to day tasks.

Tip: Regularly give constructive feedback or appraisal to your employees, this makes them feel as though their efforts are not going unnoticed and will enable them to feel empowered, resulting in them wanting to do that bit extra for you and the company.

Some other ways you can increase your employees motivation is by;

• Continuous updating of Personal Development Plans – giving employees the opportunity to develop, reflect, set goals for self-improvement will enable high staff retention and job satisfaction.
• Achievable goal setting – setting smaller milestone achievements to reach the end goal is a great way to motivate and employees will be able to recognise the small yet effective steps they are making towards the goal.
• Communication – ensuring that every employee within the team are ultimately working towards the same goal, explain to the team the purpose of the goal or task, so that everyone understands the purpose.
• Support – employees need to know that there is someone available for support within their team or organisation, this should be the role of the leader. You could provide support by having an open-door policy, holding regular 1 to 1’s, organising regular team meetings and empowering employees to communicate concerns or worries.

Tip: Depending on the different types of personalities, strengths and weaknesses you have within your team, you will need to adopt certain motivation techniques.