Employees should be seen as the internal customers of an organization, satisfied and delighted employees lead to an organization with phenomenal growth levels. Problems tend to arise when we lose focus on the employees and tend to place more emphasis on business development. In the end you have employees with a low morale who do your organization more harm than benefit. In essence, employee motivation is necessary for the proper functioning of any organization.
More recently organizational attitude towards employee motivation has changed for the better. New programs targeting employees as well as reward and recognition programs from these organizations have done wonders for improving employee motivation. These are some tips which will help in employee motivation and the creation of a good working environment.
Foundation: laying the foundation for an employee driven organization or work environment may look a little difficult and will include a lot of hard work but the returns are going to be good. Employees need to feel as if they own the company, which will motivate them and create a sense of responsibility. Above all, there should be a joining orientation program targeted at new recruits. You can do it in two steps:
- You should offer them a brief history of the company and tell them about future goals and visions as well. You should also point out where they belong in the scheme of things and their importance to the organization.
- Offer them a responsibility and place them back in a position where they are permitted to think from the organizational viewpoint and have the capacity to craft meaningful solutions. What this will do is make them feel like a part of the organization and aid them in the achievement of higher goals.
Environment: It is necessary to create the right working environment and this can be done by doing or creating any of the following:
- Lateral Profiles to increase responsibility
- Open forums
- Training programs
- Benefits introduced to initiate the process of employee involvement
- Provide proper guidance
- Compassion: If you are always ready to listen to them then they feel like a part of the team. It gives them a lot of motivation to surge ahead.
Rewards: These are another factor which plays an important place in ensuring performance. Any employee who has done a good job should be rewarded so that others in the team get motivated enough to perform better in order to receive such rewards. The logic behind this is psychological in nature. Rewards doesn’t necessarily mean a salary increase, you can hand them out by taking them to lunch or by giving them tickets to a coveted baseball game. With all this you create a stronger bond within your team.
Tasks & talents: A team of any number of people should always be assessed in order to determine strength as well as weaknesses; as soon as this has been done each member should be assigned to tasks which you feel they can handle comfortably. Make sure that their tasks are constantly rotated so that each person has enough confidence to handle any task given to them.
