101: Motivating employees
Washington, D.C., analytics company Gallup released a poll showing only two in every 10 employees feel their performance is managed in a way to motivate them to do outstanding work. Thirty percent strongly agreed their managers involved them in goal setting. Gallup estimates the cost of poor management and lost productivity from U.S. employees who are not engaged or actively disengaged at work is around $1.2 trillion per year.
Make people want to offer maximum effort. According to the Wall Street Journal, it isn't enough to direct and control employees looking to shun work. What's better is to create an environment where they want to give it their all. “Having employees harness self-direction and self-control in pursuit of common objectives, it turned out, was far preferable to imposing a system of controls designed to force people to meet objectives they didn't understand or share,” according to WSJ.com.
Reduce their pressure outside of work. Inc.com says productivity and morale can suffer when workers feel crunched between competing responsibilities. “Companies that have instituted flexible-employee arrangements have gained motivated employees whose productivity has increased,” the publication says. Consider flex-time work, shorter work weeks or things like job sharing, Inc.com advises.
Challenge them. It may seem counterintuitive, as we are talking about making employees' lives more full and robust at work. But giving someone a challenge speaks volumes, according to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Reece Akhtar at Inc.com. They cite a study showing 46 percent of workers consider themselves overqualified for their jobs. It's “critical to push your employees beyond their level of comfort. Failing to do so will significantly increase disengagement, turnover and poor psychological health,” they write, and potentially send star employees to competitors.
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