By: Donna Scharfenberg, Service Strategies
Employees are motivated to complete tasks when they perceive the outcome will satisfy one or more of their basic human needs. To ensure long-term motivation, managers must create a work environment that provides employees with the opportunity to satisfy these needs on a consistent basis. The following six techniques will help you create a “motivating environment.”
1. Motivation comes from caring, not scaring. Fear should never be used as a motivation strategy. It may get you what you want now, but it will set you up for what you don’t want in the future in the form of employee anger, resentment, and lack of enthusiasm and commitment. When employees feel that supervisors or managers care about them and that they are perceived as respected and valuable members of the organization, they are more cooperative, enthusiastic and committed to organizational goals, both in the present and in the future.
2. Employee motivation grows and blossoms in the right environment.
When employees feel nurtured, appreciated, acknowledged, and respected, they’ll give 100% of their time, effort, and commitment in return. The job of the manager is to create a work environment that provides employees with the opportunity to attain their goals and experience what they value most in their professional lives.
3. Walk your talk.
Modeling the behavior you want from your employees is the most effective way to change any behavior. If you want your employees to arrive on time, you should be in early or at least arrive at an acceptable time. If you want motivated employees, you need to become a role model for motivation.
4. Make work fun.
Laughter is not only good for the soul but also is good for the mind and body. Having fun is a basic human need, and when it’s met in the workplace, productivity goes up.
5. Use the law of attraction.
The law of attraction states that whatever we focus on we bring to ourselves. If you focus on the lack of motivation in your employees, you’ll find more and more examples of it. When you seek to learn more about motivation and create an atmosphere that fosters it, you’ll find more examples of motivation in the workplace.
6. Foster an ongoing commitment.
Motivating employees is an ongoing process because people are continually growing and changing. As they achieve something they want or value, they then seek to achieve more of the same. If motivation is not kept on your managerial front burner, you’ll see the fires in your employees slowly fade and die out.
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