1.Understanding Employee Wants: While the underlying fact is that everyone keeps working for money, employees have their own personal reasons to stay on a particular job. It is important as an employer that you understand these wants and keep a track record of them. Talking to employees of their likes and wants always gives them a sense of importance.
2.Career Path and Training: It is of prime importance that you judge the potential of a person and chalk out a career plan as to where he should be placed and how fast he has got to grow along the designated path. This is a very important step in having a succession planning strategy in place.
3.Redress Grievances: It is human tendency to expect comfort and solace in times of distress and need. If you find your employee distressed or not performing to his abilities you can be sure that there is trouble creeping around. It is a good idea to sit for a one-to- one session and asking him to speak out as a friend.
4.Get Rid of Dictator Bosses: It has been estimated that one of the primary reasons for people to leave the organisation attributes to their immediate bosses. When people are not comfortable with their superiors and do not have a way to address the issue, they are just left with one choice. It is very important that you employ managers and not tyrants in your organisation.
5.Rewards and Recognition: Employee rewards and recognition is a way of thanking them for all the wonderful jobs that they have done in the past. It also sets the tone for their continuous contribution that they are out to make in the years to come. It is rather a pre-conceived notion or more probably a misconception that people usually associate rewards with monetary increase in remuneration. Employers do not realise that even a pat on the back can do wonders for the years to come.
6.Motivated Work Place: If you were to ask your employee to come and work on a weekend, he might probably reject the idea right in the first place. People usually are led by examples. On the other hand, if you make yourself the first on the list to work for the weekend, you will be surprised to see people turn up even without your asking them.
7.Incentives: The concept of incentives usually works well with departments such as sales and marketing. There have been cases where people have earned more than the salary they draw for the month. Apart from keeping the spirits of the employee high, it goes a step further in building a health-competitive work environment where people will be competing with each other in the right spirit.
8.Right Working Conditions: Nobody likes working after business hours even if it means being paid more. Employees are after all people and people have their own families too. You need to respect this idea and ensure that workload is equally distributed.
9.Social Bonding: The idea of social bonding with not only the employees but also with their families is fast catching up. Companies today have started capitalising on this idea wherein they invite family members for a dinner or get-together.
10.Handling Change Effectively: In a fast moving business world, change is a factor that one cannot evade. It is the same change that can prove to be a highly de-motivating factor for employees in an organisation. Nobody prefers change. It is, therefore, a prime requisite that you handle change very effectively.
Working Together For Success
These ten commandments of employee motivation are just guidelines for a happy and ever-growing workplace. You can deploy them or their slight variation to derive the maximum out of human capital. After all, an organisation cannot exist without this capital.