How to Motivate
your Employees

The workplace is an unnatural
environment. There’s little getting
around that fact. Without becoming
philosophical about it all, our brains
did not develop for an office.
Our brains love short-term rewards,
like catching that rabbit. They thrive
on pride and tangible progress.
The chemicals flow for security,
comfort and control. Humans
developed through teamwork, and
this rewarding culture persists.

Basically, despite our technological and
societal progress, the brains which
move your employees haven’t changed
in about 200,000 years.
So the challenge then is to satisfy these
innate triggers in a working
environment.
This isn’t about ‘tricking’ the brain or
blowing a whistle at a certain pitch.
These behaviours are everyday
occurrences, general common sense
– but they can easily be lost in the
operation
of a business.

Show their work is important
The first and most vital step is to help your employees see the
importance of their work. This plays to their pride and satisfies their
desire to be part of a team. Of course, the challenge to this depends
on the scale of the company and the role the employee fills.
The business will serve a purpose besides profit, and it’s important
that employees know that. It is easy for an employee to forget that
the business actually holds societal value if they spend time around
money, or away from the primary service.

Show their work is important
The core part of this message is to remind them that their work
has a purpose. Many jobs are boring and even the ones that
aren’t can leave the person feeling lost for reason to do it.
The brain, naturally, shirks boring things. It likes to do things it
considers interesting, important and that are a source of pride.
You can motivate your employee by playing to these and
providing them with a purpose.
For example, you could find that your Stock Control workers in
your supermarket are doing a poor job because it involves
counting the number of potatoes in a basket and this week they
just cannot find the motivation to get the figures exact.

Show their work is important
The job is mundane and there is little getting around this, so
you have to present the bigger picture. The figures will get
turned into a report; stock control is about knowing how much
produce you have in store at any time.
This report – produced directly from the information the
employee provides – will help inform how much waste the
supermarket is producing, and by extension how they can
reduce their carbon footprint.

Show their work is important
The report will be used to track
levels of shoplifting, and help
towards reducing crime. The report
will also be used to determine levels
of profitability.
Showing the end result of these
figures to the employee may provide
them with the motivation to do it
well if they can see that the accuracy
is relied upon for a number of
reasons.

Imagine the company without them
This is a really effective way of triggering the innate desire to
belong to a team. Help them see the bigger process by showing
them the hole they could leave. The day-to-day work may
naturally be boring, but if you can present them with the
bigger picture, it becomes a part of a chain of work that
results in the great final result.
If an employee is working without knowing why, without
knowing where their work fits in with the company goals, they
will stop working very soon. Humans are not drones.
We need to see results – remember, humans want to see
progress – to be satisfied. Show how punching those numbers
enables the next team to deliver, or how waiting a happy
table makes the work a lot easier for everyone else.

Maintain the working environment
Really, this should go without too much saying, but the
environment your employees are in should be clean.
The atmosphere should be friendly and where appropriate, fun.
Humans are fantastic at adapting the environment around them.
Our imagination is key to our success, and your employees need
to be able to use their own to influence their immediate
environment.
This does not have to be a redecorating; indeed, if you work at
McDonald’s, there’s no scope for changing that at all. But these
changes can be as simple as satisfying their desire for a cleaner
area, or for working with people they like working with. So long as
they are allowed to influence the environment, they will continue
to be motivated to work within it. This is about satisfying
the human need for control.

Maintain the working environment
That doesn’t mean they want to climb the ladder and become
team leader. This control can be satisfied with the minimal of
impact on anyone else. So long as they can have a meaningful
say and don’t feel like this will be taken away, their relationship
with their environment will be fine.
The environment is more than the walls; it’s clothes, it’s food,
it’s all of the equipment. If there is room for flexibility, then
there is plenty of opportunity to allow your staff to play with
these, yet keep them professional.

Let them make decisions
As with the last point, decision making is crucial to satisfying that
Human need for control. Extend these decisions past the
environment into the business and you will have a surprisingly
motivated team. Giving them a say in the changes – or even just
letting them know at the earliest opportunity – lets your staff feel
valued.
Getting them involved in the process is far better than just letting
them know the process is happening. There is very little reason to
exclude staff from decision making that affects their job; the
decision maker remains solely in charge even if there are more
voices in the discussion. As with much in life, the best decisions
for people are the ones made by them, rather than for them.

Let them make decisions
That said, it isn’t the end of the world if they have voiced their
opinion and nothing has come of it. Simply that they were heard and
had the opportunity to offer that control should make them feel
valued. That said, it is more valuable to give feedback even if the idea
hasn’t been adopted; it is important to show that you considered it
as much as you heard it.
Quite often, a business will stifle its growth because it doesn’t
innovate; because its ideas are old. Asking employees for their
improvements should be an intrinsic pillar of how the business
grows. Employees know their part of the business best, and will
collectively improve the day-to-day smoothness if allowed to do so.

Allow development
The workplace is naturally a place of experience and learning. This
is why work experience is just as valuable, if not more so, than
education to someone hiring. Without these feelings of
development, it will not be long before staff feel like they are part
of an organisation that doesn’t care about them, or that doesn’t
want them to go further.
Nearly all employees will be aiming higher than their current
position, as this is a naturally human thing to do. Don’t ignore this,
and certainly don’t suppress it even if it goes against your wishes
as an employer to have a stable workforce. It will be far more
unstable if the staff feel restricted and their ambitions suppressed
because they will soon leave.

Allow development
To appeal to the human want for progress, we should be looking
to constantly educate and develop our staff. Implement a formal
procedure whereby personal targets are met, and ensure that
employees can add their own goals to this list.
A tangible list helps these achievements become realities and
can remind an employee of everything the business has helped
them to achieve since they joined. Their motivation to work and
add value for you will increase as an appreciation for the value
you’ve given to them.

Ensure everyone has the tools they need
When the work builds up, it can be easy for the harder jobs
to get neglected. They may be hard for a number of reasons,
but inexcusably it could be that the employee simply doesn’t
have the tools to do it. This could be knowledge or
something more physical; it is the employer’s responsibility
to ensure that the staff have everything they need to
complete the task.
This is a common sense tip, but it’s easily neglected when
your role as a boss doesn’t coincide with theirs so your day-to-
day experiences differ. It could be as simple as ensuring
everyone has a stapler, or maybe something that requires
training, like proper phone etiquette.

Ensure everyone has the tools they need
If it is training, this can contribute to
their personal development and
their sense of progress. If it’s just a
stapler, this is still quite important –
ignoring this displays a disregard
for the importance of the job.
Their value of the job role can
quickly plummet if their toolbox is
neglected.

Find out what they want to do
A great way of motivating an employee is giving them a task
they have specifically asked to do. The pressure will be on
them to perform, and there will be the added bonus that the
end result is likely to be their best.
Another way of encouraging this without directly handing
them a task is asking them what part of the business, or the
business direction, excites them the most. If they thought
the relationship with another business was key and
something they were interested in finding out more about,
assign them a task that gets them involved there. This kind
of flexibility ticks so many motivator boxes; primarily it gives
them control but it also aligns with their feeling of being in a
team and of making progress in their job.

Find out what they want to do
It doesn’t have to be a task they want to do. It could be that they
want to finish a bit earlier so they can pick up their child from
school to save on childcare costs and spend more time with them,
or that they want to cycle to work and need support with
somewhere to lock their bike.
These requests can’t always be met, but so long as they are heard
and clearly considered, the employee will appreciate the chance
they’ve had to ask. Taking an interest in their work-life balance
acknowledges that you value their own priorities as well as the
business’s.

Communicate both positive
and negative feedback
Praise or otherwise, it is important to communicate with your staff
to let them know how you feel their work is going. Make sure this
is communicated from your perspective – don’t assume theirs.
This also has the added benefit of showing that you are paying
attention – this subtly communicates that you value their time.
Praise is, of course, preferred, and the desire for more – relating
to the value they feel they represent – is important to their
motivation. Try and praise publically (without embarrassing or
patronising them). This has the additional effect of motivating
others to seek the same praise.

Communicate both positive
and negative feedback
If the feedback is negative, say it constructively and offer a
reasonable solution. If the solution is essentially the problem,
think creatively and allow some flexibility. Show that you
understand the issue, or at least that you understand that we all
have difficulties and need to find ways around them.
This communication is essential not only for the motivation of
an individual to continue progressing, but also for the structure
of the business as a whole – if these negatives are left without
being said for fear or tension or rebuttal, the business will
inevitably be worse off for it.

Communicate both positive
and negative feedback
For example, one of your employees could consistently be
completing a task a day after it was due. The problem could be
that the deadline coincides with too much of their other work,
most of which cannot be done in advance. The solution is not
simply to ask them to finish on time – if it was that simple, it
probably wouldn’t have become an issue.
The amount of work needs to be creatively managed, and
perhaps another employee brought in to help on the very busy
days. This negative feedback becomes positive – it helps address
an issue that’s hurting the business and relieves the unfair stress
from the employee. The employee will also now trust that you
can approach their issues fairly and will be more motivated to
work for you as a result.

Give them financial incentive
Jobs based on commission are certainly not for everyone, but they
do exist. The natural desire for short-term reward, in this context
being a commissioned sale, constantly motivates people to perform.
Most business models will not work on pure commission sales
alone, but many businesses can benefit from financially rewarding
their staff when they perform well.
This rewards process needs to be carefully implemented for fairness.
There is bitterness amongst many people for the bonuses of high-end
workers, which do not seem to match up with the efforts and
rewards of others. Financial incentives can thus demotivate if done
unfairly. There is less reason for a worker to try selling their extras
when they know the team leader, who does no selling, is rewarded
for his efforts. If rewards are to be team-based, they need
to reflect the efforts of each individual member.

Give them financial incentive
For example, if you are currently rewarding a team of salespeople when
all members hit a threshold, you should remember that it is important
to reward those who compete within the team, and not punish them
when other members miss out.
This kind of negative punishment harms team relationships and
creates an unpleasant motivation. The worst salesperson could end up
denying the whole team of reward; instead, reward each member as
they hit the threshold and then reward the whole team slightly more if
every member has hit the threshold. The financial rewards can stay the
same, but we have shifted the motivation from negative to positive.

Yes – even at minimum wage
To wrap up, building employee motivation is a complex task.
There are many factors at work. Businesses with a high
employee turnover may have to look at their pay packages, or it
may simply be that their employees are not motivated to work
because they feel undervalued. It can be difficult when you
know as the employer that their job isn’t actually that
important; or that if it is, that they are easily replaced.
Minimum wage jobs will suffer greatly from this employee – and
employer – apathy, but the long-term success of the business
truly relies on the performance of its staff.

Yes – even at minimum wage
As an example, McDonald’s has done a fantastic job of turning
around its reputation as the droll-end of the school dropout
market. It is now an employer that encourages staff progression
within the business and outside of it through education
schemes, it allows staff flexibility with shifts, and flexibility with
which McDonald’s you can work at (though McDonald’s is
perhaps one of the few businesses in the world which can
effectively put this into practice).
These employee-focused policies reflect the appreciative nature
of the business towards its staff, and the end result is motivation
to work hard for that business.

For More Information
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