How To Motivate Employees
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How To Motivate Employees

Uncategorized Jan 15, 2020

How Do You Motivate Employees?

One of the most frequently asked questions is how to motivate employees?

How do you do it right? When you get frustrated with performance, how do you figure out which ways are best to guide and encourage your team to do what you want?

In the technologically agile world today there are countless examples of tools that are designed to make it look like you’re being productive and working, when you’re not working.

There is an extension for Netflix that opens up a window appearing to be a conference call. It allows employees to see multiple video bubbles, like you’re used to viewing on conferences, along with a tiny window in the corner which of course is playing the show or movie you want to watch. So when your boss or manager walks by your workstation, at a glance it appears like you are diligently contributing and attending a call.

March Madness is a time of year when we can all expect productivity to go down a little, as everyone is scrambling to watch and keep up to date with their brackets. What does theNCAA do for viewers who want to watch basketball while they work? With the press of a “boss button” the active screen will open up a spreadsheet to make it look like you’re working.

With all of these innovative tools out there to make it look like your working, when your not working, it’s no wonder why Deloitte found that 87% of employees are not performing up to their potential.

If you’re a manager or you oversee a team I’m certain that’s a result you can believe based simply from your own first hand experience. You know and feel that nine out of ten of your employees aren’t doing their best work.

How do we get the best out of them? Don’t motivate with money

All too often I see that people are trying to motivate employees with money at every single level, to the point where a boss or a manager might even say to workers that the primary reason they’re coming in to work in the morning is for a paycheck.

Incentivizing your team to strive for and accomplish a set of goals, only with the bonus of more money isn’t the only way to foster motivation. It also doesn’t work. Check out a video from RSA Animate for Daniel Pink’s TED Talk where he proved that money isn’t the primary motivator especially for cognitive work.

Are Your Employees Required to Think?

An amazingly insightful presentation that was the result of an incredibly vast study citing examples from a large number of different employers and economies, it reinforces the fact that unless your business is just monotonous factory work where your employees are required to do thoughtless actions, promising more money as a motivating tool is falling short.

My guess is you need team members to think and perform at a high level. If that’s true, you’re not going to have them reach peak effectiveness by simply offering them more money.

This Week’s Take Away

Evaluate how you are currently motivating your employees now. Look at all of the ways you encourage your team members to grow and reach their goals. If money is even a small part of any of it, reconsider those methods.

If money is the primary motivation, then you are doing it wrong.

In the past we have covered a variety of ways you can motivate your team members, but when you’re trying to motivate people in a cognitive way it boils down to hitting on these three things.

1.Freedom 2. Affirmation 3. Purpose

You need to give your team freedom, affirmation, and you have a purpose that unifies your team. My team is amazing and they’re some of the best workers in the country. We are an Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Company in America and that wouldn’t have happened without my team and if they weren’t motivated.

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