How to Motivate People to Give Their Best for Your Company

Advice: Use financial and non-financial incentives to increase motivation and productivity of the people in your company.

Despite the predominant opinion that most employees respond positively only to the amount of money they get , you can greatly improve your employees’ performance when you diversify the types of incentives you use.

A payment that reflects the talents, experiences and expectations of employees is a necessary condition to attract quality resources in your team. To read necessary condition, and not sufficient! Good salaries and an attractive benefits package will help you hire quality people for your company and, to a certain extent, to keep them. But these incentives are not enough to retain valuable employees!

Entrepreneurs and managers assume too often, that what motivates themselves also motivates their employees. In reality, each person has his own idea of what a good bonus from the company means. And usually, the view from the top of the company is different from the one perceived by employees. That’s one of the reasons why some people are entrepreneurs, and others are employees.

What are the employees’ expectations in the 21st century? Taking the example of innovative companies such as Google, that has built a five-star employer reputation by offering their workforce amazing benefits, people have rising expectations. Some employees want more freedom and flexible working hours. Many appreciate when the company makes their life easier as parents. Others will prefer a certain management style based on teamwork and merit recognition.

So what else can you do?

Offer Non-Financial Incentives to Increase Your Team’s Productivity

Here is a list of 12 things you can do to raise the level of motivation for the people in your team, so they get more work done, which improves the bottom line of your business.

The list is inspired by the methods I apply in my business; many of the ideas I started testing after I visited Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

1. Give your employees maximum freedom, let them plan their week how they think it is effective, let them explore their ideas about new products or simply try new ways of doing things
2. Allow for flexible working hours
3. When delegating, take into account the type of tasks and activities each member of your team prefers, and what each person is best at
4. Provide certain services to your employees which makes their life easier, and of course, saves them precious time. Depending on the size of your company, it may make sense to hire one person especially to help your team, by: collecting their dry cleaning, picking up a package, or taking the children to school, so they can be more focused on professional issues
5. Recognize in public employees and the team’s performance (you and other managers). Make it a habit to praise an employee every day
6. Make simple discussions with your employees to show a natural interest in people
7. Say “thank you” and praise people
8. Treat every one fairly and impartially
9. Honor your promises
10. Assign responsibilities and always be prepared to assist your employees
11. Support, provide training and guide your team to success
12. Challenge your employees, so THEY can grow and evolve

Once you have implemented these measures, you can establish a way of working that will help you to keep your employees and transform your company into a more attractive place for other quality employees.

What is essential for you as a business leader is to understand that your trick of offering a bonus or increasing the payment will not work for an employee who believes it is essential to enjoy a flexible work schedule. To determine what people really want I recommend you establish an open system of communication with the people in your team. Simply listen, observe, remember individual differences and take care to give people the benefits that really drives THEM.

What happens if you don’t have resources to make a competitive financial offer for the employees you want? 

A non-financial incentives scheme is especially valuable in this case. For businesses that are just starting out, small companies in the startup stage, the impossibility of offering generous pay may be offset by a good mix of non-financial incentives such as those included on the above list. In addition, offering a percentage of the business for key employees may be an excellent way of motivating employees in the running of your company.

Did you know it costs three times the salary of an existing employee to replace the employee? Think of the time required to find and recruit a new employee and the training costs at the same level of productivity. This is why it’s so important to establish what really motivates your employees!

This article is expended in one of the 101 tactics proposed in Business Unlimited to achieve smarter profits faster.

Click here to check out the entire Business Unlimited collection.

Employees are the most important resource that a business has. The best employees these days are those who want to grow and evolve. That's why I have one-day training programme for you, where your employees better understand themselves and others, and learn how to communicate more effectively so jobs are done fast.

All my training programmes are practical, interactive and fun. They are not mere delivery of theory from books, but are based on what I learnt and, most importantly, what I assimilated from others in my own evolution. Participants love my training sessions because they are REAL.

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