How do you make your people feel proud to work with you? Because if they don’t enjoy working with you, they are not going to perform at their best. You can push them, but that will not guarantee consistent results you want to see every day. The only thing you can do is to build a pleasant working environment full of motivators at work.
Motivated employees are motivators at work. They have the desire to motivate others and are happy to share their knowledge with everyone who needs it.
What is Employee Motivators at Work?
Employee motivators are things that drive your employees to work hard, and better for desired results. In other words, motivators at work are factors in the workplace that give people the will to work hard and well. If your staff have low morale then it has something to do with a lack of motivators at work.
The following are top employee motivators at work:
- Sense of self-accountability in the workplace
- Desire to achieve better results
- Determination to exceed expectations
- Quest for more work responsibility
- Having the opportunity for career promotions and growth
- Presence of recognizing and rewarding good performances
- Job enrichment
- Better pay and rewards
- Ambitious work projects
It is essential that you pay attention to the type of employee motivators at work. There are both good and bad employee motivators in the workplace. And they all influence and drive the behaviors of your staff one way or another. Remember that people in the workplace behave based on the environment around them.
If the atmosphere doesn’t allow teamwork, they are not going to cooperate and work with each other in a productive way. Also, if a manager keeps throwing tantrums, you will be sucking the life out of your staff — they will feel threatened and insecure at work. Knowing to take care of your staff well is what makes you a better people manager.
Also read: 14 Tips for Managing Staff in a Small Business Effectively
Usually, people work hard at full capacity when they feel being part of a happy strong team. The work environment must suit every team member if you want all of them to be productive.
Unleash Employee Motivators at Work
First, ensure that you have qualified employees in the right positions. If you have the right people in your team, you just need to create suitable conditions that motivate them. You don’t have to motivate the right people. If the workplace environment suits them, they should feel motivated by their work.
The other thing you should know is, motivating employees is a tricky thing because people are different. It is not a one size fits all. Everyone has their motivational styles. So, it is down to the manager to find out what motivates each member of your staff.
Each employee has individual preferences that drive their enthusiasm in the workplace. They have different things that make their work meaningful and worthwhile.
Pay Attention to Employee Motivators
Many people want to work in a workplace that feels like a community where they can be friends. But others hate it, instead, they want autonomy and individual responsibility. Some want to feel that they are progressing in their work. And many don’t care much about any of that so long as they get paid a good salary.
Also, some individuals want to get things done quickly and others don’t. Those who do may not understand why their colleagues always take the time to complete their work.
Many other people are driven by perfection so they put a lot of consideration and thinking into their work. They take time to do a perfect job which can make them a bit slower. But their drive is not about finishing the work quickly. It is a bad feeling they get after doing a poor job drives them on.
So for those who don’t want to make mistakes or fail, their motivation comes from perfection. Finishing the work on time is a requirement but completing a quality job is essential in most workplaces.
It’s therefore essential for a manager to pay full attention to what keeps each team member happy at work.
It is very difficult to manage people because often they are so different in many ways. The best a manager can do is to use their differences, effort and time effectively for better outcomes.
Focus on Collective Needs
Not everyone gets on well with their manager. Also, not all people are happy with the conditions at work, even excellent ones. The most important thing for the manager is to do what is right for the entire team.
One thing you should not do is to bend yourself into unnatural shapes to provide what every team member wants. However, it is crucial you listen actively to their needs and that you do the basic management core things right.
Ensure that you create a work environment that allows people to get the work done on time and to a high degree of quality.
Set clear expectations and always give useful feedback on their performance. And show them how the company values its effort. Also, insulate them from the harsh realities of workplace politics and ensure they get the right tools to do the job.
Watch the Demotivators at Work
Don’t keep moving the goalposts, yell at your staff or neglect to solve their problems — these are some of the demotivators at work that de-motivate good employees.
You don’t need anything that can make your staff hate their work. You must deal with everything that can stop them from feeling happy and inspired at work.
Read more: The 12 Best Things About an Agent For Change
Set High Expectations to Motivate Employees
One of the motivators at work that drives employees to high levels of performing is the type of work ambitions and expectations a manager creates. People get inspiration from a manager who keeps set low expectations. Most employees want to step up not level out.
For a manager, you need to set high expectations for your people to grow. That means creating ambitious projects and then challenge them to gain new skills. This is essential because if your staff to don’t see a career path ahead, they will not stay.
So, create ambitious work tasks that none of them have done before and then ask who is stepping up to take it on? There will be always individuals within the team who will rise to take on the challenge. And that drives to reach your high expectations.
An ambitious project can get many employees excited and make them want to be part of the project team. The key employee motivator is the ambitions of the project. Everyone becomes driven by the challenge of delivering the project goal.
Job Enrichment is Workplace Motivator
Most work tasks are repetitive. Many people hate doing the same thing every day, it is very boring. Motivated employees always want to do new tasks or improve something. They have the mindset of making things better all the time. And they hate sitting around doing nothing.
As a manager, you must find other ways of making the work more exciting to motivate your people.
Enrich their job and let them get on with it. Job enrichment means that the job you assign your staff has more scope and value.
It does not just work that requires employees to do repetitive tasks. An enriched job must have some complexity to challenge your employees to be the best they can. Also, they need to be in control of how they do it.
When your team members feel in control of their workload, they try harder and get a sense of satisfaction.
Empower Your People
Empowerment is also a powerful employee motivator at work. Empowerment gives employees some authority to make decisions within certain limits. It also gives them autonomy and responsibility to try, create, and do new things.
Most people at work want less supervision and more freedom to do their work. They don’t want a manager’s interference. You don’t have to be leaning on their shoulder checking how they do their job.
You don’t need to hold employees accountable. Instead, engage and help them to find their purpose at work, they will hold themselves accountable and become motivators in the workplace.
It is a simple thing to do. Just get everybody to understand what their purpose is in the workplace. Their purpose in the workplace is about staying engaged and motivated at work — even when things are tough.
If they understand and trust what you say, they are more likely to feel inspired and work at their full potential.
Trust is a key workplace motivator. When employees believe that their manager is honest and convincing, they trust you more and work harder for you, not the company. Because they feel you have their best interest in mind. Don’t forget employees only trust managers, not companies.
Show Commitment
It is a fact people in the workplace have varied interests. But it is the manager who has to get everyone to work together regardless of individual differences. And that means getting everybody on the same page with clear communication, decisions, expectations and committed leadership.
Your team is going to be full of motivators at work, only when you show commitment and leadership every day. Leadership is not casual, it is a daily commitment.
If you lead well with commitment, all your people will work hard and help each other to succeed. In other words, your team will be full of spirited and committed individuals. They will become motivators at work because they will not want to be part of something less than greatness.