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10
Ways To Stimulate Employee Motivation
Author: Rosie Fletcher
Today's fast-moving business environment demands that the effective
manager be both a well-organized administrator and highly adept in
understanding people's basic needs and behavior in the workplace.
Gaining commitment, nurturing talent, and ensuring employee motivation
and productivity require open communication and trust between managers
and staff.
1. Understand their behavior
People at work naturally tend to adopt instinctive modes of behavior
that are self-protective rather than open and collaborative. This
explains why emotion is a strong force in the workplace and why
management often reacts violently to criticisms and usually seeks to
control rather than take risks. So, in order to eliminate this kind of
perspective and to increase employee motivation, it is best that you
influence behavior rather than to change personalities. Insisting what
you expect from your employees will only worsen the situation.
2. Be sure that people's lower-level needs are met.
People have various kinds of needs. Examples of lower-level needs are
salary, job security, and working conditions. In order to increase
employee motivation, you have to meet these basic needs. Consequently,
failures with basic needs nearly always explain dissatisfaction among
staff. Satisfaction, on the other hand, springs from meeting
higher-level needs, such as responsibility progress, and personal
growth. When satisfaction is met, chances are employee motivation is at
hand.
3. Encourage pride
People need to feel that their contribution is valued and unique. If you
are a manager, seek to exploit this pride in others, and be proud of
your own ability to handle staff with positive results. This, in turn,
will encourage employee motivation among your people.
4. Listen carefully
In many areas of a manager's job, from meetings and appraisals to
telephone calls, listening plays a key role. Listening encourages
employee motivation and, therefore, benefits both you and your staff. So
make an effort to understand people's attitudes by careful listening and
questioning and by giving them the opportunity to express themselves.
5. Build confidence
Most people suffer from insecurity at some time. The many kinds of
anxiety that affect people in organizations can feed such insecurity,
and insecurity impedes employee motivation. Your antidote, therefore, is
to build confidence by giving recognition, high-level tasks, and full
information. In doing so, you only not refurbish employee motivation but
boost productivity as well.
6. Encourage contact
Many managers like to hide away behind closed office doors, keeping
contact to a minimum. That makes it easy for an administrator, but hard
to be a leader. It is far better to keep your office door open and to
encourage people to visit you when the door is open. Go out of your way
to chat to staff on an informal basis. Keep in mind that building
rapport with your staff will effectively increase employee motivation.
7. Use the strategic thinking of all employees.
It is very important to inform people about strategic plans and their
own part in achieving the strategies. Take trouble to improve their
understanding and to win their approval, as this will have a highly
positive influence on performance and increasing employee motivation as
well.
8. Develop trust
The quality and style of leadership are major factors in gaining
employee motivation and trust. Clear decision making should be coupled
with a collaborative, collegiate approach. This entails taking people
into your confidence and explicitly and openly valuing their
contributions. By simply giving your staff the opportunity to show that
you can trust them is enough to increase employee motivation among them.
9. Delegate decisions
Pushing the power of decision-making downward reduces pressure on senior
management. It motivates people on the lower levels because it gives
them a vote of confidence. Also, because the decision is taken nearer to
the point of action, it is more likely to be correct. Consequently, by
encouraging them to choose their own working methods, make decisions,
and giving them responsibility for meeting the agreed goal will
encourage employee motivation among your staff.
10. Appraising to motivate
When choosing methods of assessing your staff's performance, always make
sure that the end result has a positive effect on employee motivation
and increases people's sense of self-worth. Realistic targets, positive
feedback, and listening are key factors.
If you follow these simple steps in increasing employee motivation, rest
assured you will have a good working relationship with your staff at the
same time boost you company's productivity. Just bear in mind that
people are employed to get good results for the company. Their rates of
success are intrinsically linked to how they are directed, reviewed,
rewarded, trusted, and motivated by the management.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/10-ways-to-stimulate-employee-motivation-14640.html
About the Author:
For more great employee motivation related articles and resources check
out http://employeemotivation.hrhaven.com
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