You need to know how to motivate employees–Unmotivated employees cost you a lot of money! 

Their production is lower than motivated employees, so you’re paying them the same money to do less work.  Turnover is higher, costing you more to hire and train replacements.  Unmotivated employees call in sick more and they also have more workplace injuries, they are also more likely to steal from you or be careless handling merchandise causing more damages.  Not the mention the sheer drain they are on the motivated employees both in morale and workload.

Keeping your employees motivated will be one of your larger, constant issues as a manager.

It’s not enough to think, “They should be happy enough that they even have a job.”  Sure, getting a paycheck should be motivation to come to work, but is it enough to motivate them to do good work, to strive to learn more, to go the extra mile in their customer service, to stay with your company longer, even if there are comparable jobs out there that would pay more than you pay?  I can tell you for a fact the answer is “NO”, research consistently points to the fact people leave supervisors, they don’t leave companies.

Just because a paycheck should be enough motivation doesn’t mean it is enough motivation.

Employee productivity statistics can be very enlightening when you’re deciding whether or not to put the time, effort, and money into an employee motivation program.  You can hire a company to do the statistics for you, but that’s probably only going to be cost-effective if you’re working for a large company.

Or, you can do a quick and dirty calculation by estimating how much time employees spend not working while they’re at work.  Even if they spend an hour a day chatting with coworkers, checking personal email, updating Facebook or MySpace, or just general web surfing, that works out to about 250 hours per year.  If they only make $10 per hour, during a 50-week you’re losing $2500 a year – and that’s just one employee!

There’s more to pay than just the dollars…..

There are hundreds of ways to implement an employee incentive program, but one major key before you do that is to be sure you’re paying adequate wages.  If your people feel underpaid, an incentive program won’t bridge that gap.  Maybe you need a “career day” so everyone can understand all their benefits and training programs, most companies offer competitive wages, the employees are often not aware of all the benefits and what those benefits add up to.

It’s important to ensure you have consistent pay for equivalent work and experience.  Sometimes there are discrepancies here due to one employee being an excellent negotiator.  For the most part most employees should be in a range that matches their position.  I did take over a building once that did not have proper pay and the previous manager had indeed paid certain managers more and certain managers less……  It was so alarming I immediately called my boss and told him what I needed to do and he agreed.

Performance Reviews

An employee performance review is another place to motivate employees.  People like to know how they’re doing, especially if a raise is tied to the employee evaluations.  Have a program that is consistent (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc) and has achievable, structured goals for improvements.

Performance reviews can be counterproductive if they don’t have clear goals for the individuals.  Everyone needs to know what they need to do to be “great”.  People know when they aren’t getting honest feedback and it’s very de-motivating.  People really do want to know when they have been less than adequate, you need to be honest and always approach your feedback from the perspective of helping the person.  It has to be genuine!!!  If you can’t care about people you need to find a different career.

Fear of Confrontation

Fear of confrontation is often a reason supervisors and managers avoid the difficult conversations.  I can recall being a rookie at giving bad feedback to others and feeling terrified and tongue tied.  Ask a mentor for help, practice in the mirror, ask a supervisor to sit in with you until you feel confident.  It is critical that you master this.  You will never amount to anything as a manager if you spend your time avoiding honest conversations.  If you do it with a genuinely caring attitude you will be appreciated and well regarded for years, you will earn a name for yourself!

Often the best way to avoid a difficult conversation is be honest up front.  Why wait for a review to tell someone they need to do better?  That is really short changing that person and setting them up to feel frustrated.  Maybe 6 months from a person’s performance review say, “Jane, I just wanted to take a moment to talk about your mid-year performance….”

1. Start with them……  Let them ask you questions, vent, whatever they need.
2. Ask them what you can do for them.  How can you be a better manager for them?  What do they wish you did more?  Less?
3. Talk about successes.  When did they take the position and what have they done?  What has changed?  Improved? 
4. When the dust settles then you tell them you have a few concerns….  Talk about them.  Depending on what it is make sure you take the responsibility if it was something that wasn’t addressed with them before. 
5. Set goals, discuss resources, additional training, whatever it is.  Take notes.  This conversation needs to include SMART goals. 
6. Set a date for follow up.  Make sure the employee knows they can come to you if they have a concern, question, etc.
7. End on the positives.  Thank them for their time and honesty.  Touch lightly again on the short term follow up issues you agreed on. 
8. Express your confidence in the person, in their career, performance, whatever.
9. Smile, shake hands, walk with them to the office door is always a nice gesture.

Then be sure to follow up, they will remember every word you say!  Guess what?  If you follow these steps you will almost never have an uncomfortable meeting, your employees will improve and have a stronger sense of accomplishment and commitment to YOU.  Will they improve 100% of the time to exactly the level you wanted?  No.  I wish it was that easy.  I can tell from the questions I get I will be covering this topic a LOT more because there is a lot to it.

How are you doing?

This same method works for yourself.  How are you doing?  Are you getting good feedback from your boss?  What do you need to improve?

Often a bad mark on a performance review isn’t necessarily a reflection of your complete performance, maybe you didn’t have your priorities aligned with your boss.  Maybe your boss judges your productivity by how clean your desk is, or some other thing you weren’t aware of.  Do you want to wait for your review to be told?  No.  So ask your boss for a time you can go over your performance.  Be prompt. Take notes.  Don’t get upset.  It’s not personal.

After a few months touch base with your boss again.  Have an outline for what was discussed along with notes of actions or things you did to improve, etc.  Give them a copy.  Ask how you are doing.  What can you do better?  Your boss has some other things they notice this time?  Don’t be surprised.  Priorities change.  Also, in order for you to develop there will always be things you need to work on.

Training improves performance

Another way to increase motivation, morale, and productivity is through employee training development.  You might think training is an unnecessary expense to the company, but the better trained an employee is, the better they will be at their jobs.  And the more job functions they’re cross-trained in means they’re more valuable to you – they can fill in when someone calls in sick or if a heavy load hits a certain department all of a sudden.

It also breaks down walls in departments to have employees comfortable going to other areas.  It may seem odd but people are creatures of habit, they will stay in an area they are comfortable in and that is all they will do.  Is it because they are lazy or don’t care about customers?  Rarely is that the case, it’s usually fear or discomfort of the unknown, or fear of feeling inadequate.

Typically people will stay where they are comfortable for comfort’s sake often to the detriment of other people and things.  The best thing to do is build some sort of incentive for people to learn other departments.  Have a party with various departments present, but ensure they all walk into each other’s areas.  Have one group demonstrate things to the other and vice versa.  It’s best to do something that is hands on and interactive since many people learn best that way.

Whether you use a monetary reward system or a different type of reward system for your employee motivation, be sure it’s implemented properly (so that everyone knows the requirements up front) and that it’s consistent.  If you’re inconsistent with the incentive program, you’ll lose all the time, effort and money put into it.