How to motivate your employees

Motivation of employees is a problem that every serious company that deals business according to the principles of the employer market must deal with. The book Carrots that deals with topics of motivation, bonuses and awards leads the readers into this problem easily.

As Peter Dracker claims, the best leader is the one you would want for you children. The management of the company is the one that needs to point and lead the employees and award them or punish them, praise them or blame them. Bu Jeghult, the author of the mentioned book, points out that the awarding systems must be in focus with company’s goals, which means that if awards are based on short term results, they should usually comply with long term goals of the company. Also, the award system must not be based only on parameters that could be physically measured, because that kind of system will eventually become rigid. This implicates that decision about deserved award must not be based on arbitrary ratings.

Business in the conditions of increased risk, time pressure and deadlines causes mistakes. Companies must create working conditions that allows mistakes. This kind of working environment where mistakes may and can be made and where mistakes don’t mean direct punishment is the environment which cancels out the threats. The threat only creates fear of failure and it pushes people towards not making unnecessary risk.

One thing you should be careful about is the financial state of your company and your employees. If you cannot pay them on regular basis consider revising your finance plans. Also don’t be afraid to go into debt, if that will create a better working environment that will ultimately lead to better business and higher profits. Debt is not necessarily a bad thing. If you hire a professional agency that deals with debt consolidation you can create a great debt plan that will ultimately lead your company to profit, and create a good working environment for your employees at the same time. Be sure to check top ten reviews of these types of agencies to see what agency would best suit your debt planning needs.

As said in the Carrot, this isn’t a social institution, we hire only motivated people. After getting hired, all they have to do is work. Leaders can easily demotivate others.

All of us want to see and feel that the thing we are working on is important and meaningful. Boring and tedious work doesn’t create any inner motivation and sense of achievement, that’s why it is necessary to look for award from external source.

For many people, paycheck only represents a side by result of a dynamic and interesting work they love. The kind of employee that works tedious work will only be confused by an additional award, and it will lead to a wrong conclusion – why would he be paid for something he does without any motivation. In this case, it would be good to stimulate an employee with business trips, fairs, professional specialization, additional insurance and many others.

There are people that derive their greatest from motivation from a chance to be part of decision making, and achieve a higher level of responsibility and decision making in the company. According to Hersberg, we differentiate four factors of motivation:

– the possibility to develop ourselves through our work
– the possibility to entrusted with higher responsibility
– the possibility to participle in strategic decision making
– the possibility to get a commendation

He also claims that we don’t become unsatisfied because we don’t develop ourselves through our work or because we are not entrusted with higher responsibility, he rather believes that dissatisfaction of an employee is forged by distress factors such as: paycheck, bonuses, working conditions, working environment, working climate as well as administrative rules.

So the goal is to clear out the last mentioned distress factors and prepare the implementation of Hesberg’s factors of motivation.

For example Ryanair has successfully overcome these problems through their humor strategy. Even though bad working condition and financial crisis causes stress, the humor about stress can be a right thing to do. Strategy of humor works only when a powerful and stable company allows itself a lapsus in their public performance without overthinking it. Company with small reputation, bad image and weak level of recognition would only cause additional pity of the public. It is considered that the joke or a story must only have direct connections to the working situation, or a problem that occurred.

There are clear limits the strategy must not ever pass:
– death, sickness, unemployment
– religious questions
– moral confusion (abortion, erotica)
– marginalized groups (special needs persons, immigrants, homosexuals)

Humor strategy brings the clarity of emotion and exact character. Being funny doesn’t mean making jokes about others, rather opposite, hit and find a real emotion with people, in this case your employees.