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Five Thoughts On Solving Your Company's Motivation Problem

This article is more than 9 years old.

In one of my earlier articles, I discussed workplace happiness and some of the most common myths we associate with employee satisfaction.

At first glance, motivation and happiness would seem to have a lot in common, but the truth is that they both present unique challenges and opportunities for company leadership. Happiness is about encouraging employees to believe in themselves; motivation is about encouraging employees to believe in their work and their role in the company.

I’ve put together five suggestions that have helped us to improve employee motivation; I hope you have similar results.

Employees need to believe that they can achieve

Even the most confident workers may sell themselves short from time to time. Remaining gainfully employed, and transitioning deftly from one rung of The Ladder to the next is often not just a matter of ability, but of belief in that ability.

Part of this process comes down to identifying the strengths of every new employee. Our hiring process is famously meticulous, and most of the reason is because we really want to know people before we bring them aboard. We don’t doubt that they’re capable; we just want to know the depth of their abilities and their passions in order to provide them with work that they can feel invested in.

Besides the hiring process, another way we do this is to provide a challenging but still realistic set of expectations for each role within the company. Sometimes these are daily challenges, and other times it’s a long-term path toward advancement. Employees can see very clearly from the start what progress looks like in the context of their position, but more than that, they’re able to believe that they’re capable of that progress.

The workplace needs to be "casteless"

One of the most significant barriers to workplace motivation is the perception that an employee is inherently less valuable than their co-workers, or that they belong to a specific social group. In middle school we call these cliques. In certain traditional countries, we call them castes.

Nobody should feel as though their contribution is less valuable than their co-workers'. The most extreme example of this that I have witnessed occurred in a warehouse; the people who walked with the most pronounced swagger in their step were the ones that operated the dangerous machinery. Danger in the workplace is not something we want to trivialize, and it’s certainly not something that should be used to ostracize other workers.

If you’re concerned with employees feeling that their work doesn't matter, consider cross-training them to do some of the more “glamorous” work. Employees should believe that, no matter where their particular talents and strengths ultimately take them, they begin with the same potential as every other employee. Recognizing this will help that caste comparison to die on the vine.

Employees should look forward to being evaluated

I can’t help but think back to grade school, where the return of a project or term paper was an occasion for equal measures of confidence and apprehension. Awaiting judgment on your efforts is a pretty singular experience.

In the workplace, I try to keep my evaluations pretty casual. As a result, our team members have come to think of them as opportunities for productive friendly conversation, rather than a chance for management to sit in judgment of their hard work.

In practical terms, this means using evaluations as a chance for your team members to give feedback as well as receive it. Allow them a chance to tell you what’s working and what’s not. Sometimes, motivation is simply a matter of reassuring them that you care about their progress as human beings, rather than investments.

Decide as a team what the "greater good" actually looks like

If you’re a fan of classic Star Trek, you’re probably familiar with a certain Vulcan proverb: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” As fictional mantras go, I’ve definitely heard worse.

Of course, the problem with preaching the “greater good” is the fact that it’s a hugely subjective phrase. In the business world, this translates to different visions for the company and different definitions for what it means to be a productive employee.

We try to involve our team members as much as possible in the shaping of our company’s vision and mission statements. Formulating company goals, ambitions, and values should be a matter of considerable discussion. We've all done our fair share of work for bosses whose business goals or Five Point Plans for Success sound like they were written decades ago by someone who was already out of touch.

Your company’s identity and plans for the future need to change over time as your team grows and introduces new ideas. Incorporating your employees into that process is absolutely vital.

Encourage "ownership" of a team member's role in the company

I mentioned above how important constructive employee evaluations are. Just as important as being evaluated, however, is allowing your team members to appraise their own progress within the company – and to set their own goals. We call this ownership.

Our approach to goals is probably not unique, but we do think it’s effective. Each month we gather our employees together to discuss our personal goals for that month. These goals frequently revolve around personal growth and continued education, but other times they’re very closely tied to a particular project that the team as a whole is working on.

We don’t need to harass our employees into achieving their goals. In most cases, the ever-changing nature of our industry simply makes it necessary for our employees to keep up with their own learning. Each month, if a certain percentage of the team has accomplished their goals, we award the company as a whole with a reward such as a free lunch or a new feature for the common areas. It’s the carrot method rather than the stick method, and we've been incredibly pleased so far with how invested our team members are in the company’s progress as a result.