Staff Motivation – 7 Essential Steps To Make It Happen

Introduction

Motivation doesn’t really exist. It’s just a word. We use it to describe what happens when staff do well what managers want them to without management intervention. Pay careful attention to the following seven issues. Motivation will follow.

1. State The Performance You Expect

Employees want to know the exact results that you expect from them. It’s essential that you set crystal clear, unambiguous, measurable performance standards. Performance goals are important. But standards tell employees how well they’re progressing and how they’ll know they’ve achieved the results you want.

2. Specify Exactly How You’ll Measure Performance

Set the performance standards. Say precisely how their performance will be measured against the standards. The standard may be to produce 9 content rich, publishable blogs each calendar month. The measure may be to produce 2 a week for 4 consecutive weeks plus one “standby” blog. You could improve the standard by defining “content rich” and “publishable”.

3. Let Them Know “How Well They’re Going”

Employees should know, daily if possible, how well they’re performing against the standards. Establish internal systems that produce that information. Support it through verbal feedback as required, preferably every week. Accurate and specific information is essential for effective staff motivation.

4. Provide Resources

You cannot expect Staff to be effective if you don’t provide and maintain adequate resources: equipment, tools, time, machines and support. And keep everything in good working order.

5. Create Performance Systems

Your role is, with employees, to put systems in place that make it impossible for them to fail. Remember “system” is merely a word we use to describe “how we do things around here.” If your systems are poor your people will fail. That’s the reality.

6. Establish Performance Based Reward Systems

Pay employees well when they achieve results. Pay incentives to reward superior performance. It’s best to establish reward and incentives systems that reinforce the importance and value of performance standards. They should also enhance business goals.

7. Encourage Autonomy

Set standards, establish systems, provide feedback, reward achievment. Having done that, encourage employees to recommend improvements in all three areas. Employees want to give you what you expect. But they also expect you to respect their achievement with greater freedom to act to improve their work.

Other Issues

• Select staff with great care: look for people who’ll respond to a strong performance based approach.
• Measure performance, not behaviour: behaviour matters only if it inhibits performance.
• Have a clearly defined, narrow business focus and a clearly defined target market.
• Pep talks have limited, if any, value: implement the 7 points and you won’t need to give pep talks.
• Try to create positive consequences for employees who perform well.

Conclusion

Forget about trying to motivate employees. You’ll be a truly successful “motivator” only when you’ve established a culture where employees motivate themselves. When staff are doing precisely what you want without your intervention, you’ll have genuine staff motivation.

What To Do Now

Review the 7 motivation steps. Which do you believe you could do better? Before you make changes discuss your opinions with your people. Then act collaboratively.