Nobody wants to work in dull and dreary places. It kills your enthusiasm and creativity and makes work a burden. The key to happy, productive, innovative employees is to keep them strongly motivated to working for the good of the company. Here are some ways to keep your employees highly motivated:

#1 – Get to Know Your Employees:

This is one of the most important factors in keeping your employees highly motivated. Every person is different and requires different perks to keep them motivated. Get to know the kind of personality each employee has – some will work best if you keep praising their extra efforts and their hard work. Others will work best if you show interest in them as a person while still others will feel more comfortable with a distant, cool relationship. Some will take criticism as constructive and strive to improve their work, while others will get offended by criticism. Managing each employee both professionally and diplomatically is the key to keeping them motivated.

#2 – Offer Rewards:

Most people are highly motivated when towards achieving a goal, so offer rewards for meeting a particular goal. For example, have an employee of the month award for the most efficient work, or offer material rewards such as a bonus. This will promote healthy competition among your employees and will keep them working hard and giving it their best.

#3 – Make the Workplace Fun and Comfortable:

The workplace is where your employees spend a large part of their day. If it is seen by them as boring, stressful, and dull and dreary, they will lose their motivation to work for its good. Keep the look spacious, light and airy, and offer opportunities for fun and socializing, such as staff picnics, dinners, and office parties. In addition, take special care of hygiene factors. Hire good cleaning staff, and also ensure that the food provided to your employees is hygienic.

#4 – Ensure Democratic Leadership:

Let your employees have a say in how things are run. For instance, meet with them once a week to hear their problems and take their own suggestions for solving them. Making people feel valued is a great way of boosting their self esteem, leading to better motivation. In addition, allow them some independence as far as working methods are concerned. It gets difficult to stick to very hard and fast specifications, so allow them room for a little variety. Appreciate the personal touch in their work. Employees work best when allowed to follow their own methods of working, and this boosts their productivity dramatically.

#5 – Enrich Your Employees’ Job Experience:

Create little challenges and an environment of healthy competition among your employees. Delegate tasks of a suitable difficulty level to each employee, according to the level of interest they exhibit. Making their job more challenging makes them feel better when they actually do a good job, and keeps them working harder to outdo their own achievements. Appreciating an employee when they rise to meet a challenge is very important for maintaining their motivation level.

#6 – Allow Room for Error:

To err is human, so lessen your employees’ stress level by forgiving the occasional error or lapse. Be understanding when they have problems and ensure that you are always approachable – they should not be afraid of coming to tell you that there has been a mistake. Always have a plan B in hand for when something goes wrong. Ensure that your employees do not try to cover up their mistakes by pointing fingers at others. Strongly discourage the blame culture. This way, you not only keep your staff highly motivated, but also win genuine respect from your subordinates.

How do you keep your employees motivated? Long hours, high pressure, tight deadlines, and all the other stresses and strains of employment can contribute to the deflation of employee motivation. Your recognition/reward systems are typically the counter to this depreciation.

The problem with motivating a workforce is that individuals are not necessarily motivated by the same criteria. So rather than implement watered-down attempts at catch-all solutions that cater to the lowest common denominator, it is advisable to determine and apply motivators on an individual basis. In larger companies, however, this is often impossible.

#1 Money Matters!

The one motivator that applies to every employee is, of course, money. Remuneration is the primary reason why we work. A fair, living wage is the cornerstone of the motivated employees that underpin a successful business. All other motivators are built on this one. Without it, they are useless.

However, let’s assume you pay your employees well. What else can you do to decrease employee turnover and increase loyalty, morale, and productivity?

#2 Supervisor Appreciation

Though money is well established as the primary motivator, many studies have shown that employees often rank supervisor appreciation higher. For example, the motivational guru, Bob Nelson, mentioned in his Workforce article, “More than anything else, employees want to be valued for a job well done by those they hold in high esteem.”

#3 Control

People like to have some semblance of control over their work, to avoid feeling like mindless automatons. Having an input on decision making and a clearly defined roster of responsibility enhances an employee’s self-worth, which acts as its own motivator.

#4 Belonging

Hierarchical transparency enables employees to feel like they are part of a group working towards a common goal. If management share their decision-making processes with the workforce it invariably breeds inclusion and group harmony, which in turn foster communal motivation and all its satellite benefits.

#5 Growth and Development

The opportunity to learn new skills and develop existing ones is a prime motivator for most people in a personal development capacity. Education and training allow us to realize a closer proximity to our potential that increases personal satisfaction and subsequently acts as a great motivator.

#6 Clearly Defined Leadership

Employees prefer a clear structure to work with. Distinct expectations and well-defined goals give them a framework that can optimize their performance. This structure is provided by effective communication from strong leadership.

#7 Performance Recognition

In addition to the typical bonus schemes employed by many companies, employees also want underperformers fired or at least, downgraded in pay. Performance-dependant pay has been shown to be one of the premier motivators available.

Ira Kay and Bruce Pfau’s The Human Capital Edge illustrated that employers underrate the importance of flexible work schedules and advancement opportunities to employees. This means that many employers focus their motivational efforts in areas that don’t connect quite as well with their employees. If you can accurately determine what your employees actually want, rather than what you think they want, you may find a surprising discrepancy.

photo courtesy of Lauren Kennedy, Flickr

The Big Book of Team-Motivating Games: Spirit-Building, Problem-Solving and Communication Games for Every Group (Big Book Series) (Paperback)

Emotional Intelligence for Managing Results in a Diverse World: The Hard Truth about Soft Skills in the Workplace (Hardcover)

Monday Morning Motivation: Five Steps to Energize Your Team, Customers, and Profits (Hardcover)