How to motivate employees to achieve better results.

To achieve better results, employees should at least:

• clearly understand the goals set for them and have an action plan to achieve them;
• want to achieve their goals (have a sufficient level of motivation);
• they must have the resources to achieve these goals.

Let's look at how to form a system in the company in which these points will work “automatically”.

Setting goals

Perhaps everyone knows that one of the most important functions of management is planning. In every successful and structured company, department heads have clear, well-formed plans for certain periods (week, month, year, each company is different). It's also no secret that there are many companies that have no plans, the staff do not understand what is expected of them, the owners do not understand why their goals are not being achieved and where the money is, HR does not understand why they fire people... As a rule, everything is simple: the staff do not know about these goals, and this is primarily a problem for owners, managers, and HR.

The solution to this problem should start with the heads of departments. It is necessary to select managers with high organizational skills who are able to plan and organise the work of the unit or to train existing managers to do so, provided they are able to change.

In order to assess organizational skills when selecting managers you need to use the test “Level of Organisational and Communication Skills ”, which is fully automated on the Smart Way platform. Also, this test should be used when forming a personnel reserve. In this way, you will select managers who are able to set goals. But this is only part of the solution.

In order to organise the work of their subordinates efficiently, managers must have well-developed communication skills. It is not enough to write a plan, give it to an employee, and say, ‘go do it.’ It is very important to explain in detail the goal itself: why it is important to achieve it and how to do it. After that, managers should ask employees what and how they understood to ensure that the information was received correctly. To assess communication skills, the same test “Level of Organisational and Communication Skills” is used.

After selecting managers with high organisational and communication skills, you need to train your employees to achieve your goals. To do this, you need to create training material, instructions, regulations, and ensure that your staff studies this material. To make this effective, use the LMS Smart Way, which will automatically monitor your staff’s study of all the necessary materials.

So, when you have managers capable of organizing the team's work efficiently, your employees know what their goals are and are trained to achieve them, you need to ensure that employees are motivated to achieve their goals.

Motivation

It is important to motivate employees in the right way. It often happens that a company has a motivation system in place, but for some reason employees are not motivated at all. The reason is very simple: as a rule, this is an economic motivation system built on the principles of achieving KPIs or OKRs, which result in financial rewards.

But let's take a look at the well-known Maslow's pyramid.

We can see that financial rewards are only the lower level of motivation. Yes, if your employees don't have enough money to provide themselves with food, clothing, and other basic necessities, then the economic motivation system will work perfectly. But usually these are only low-income line workers. If you look at middle managers or executives, they are already at the third and higher level of the pyramid, and financial rewards are no longer a sufficient motivation for them. It's not that they don't need an economic incentive system, they definitely do, but it's not enough. For such personnel, it is important to “turn on” the system of individual, non-material motivation. After all, if the heads of departments are not sufficiently motivated to achieve their goals, they will most likely not achieve them.

How can you build an effective non-financial motivation system in your company?

First, test all employees to identify their motivational types using the Type of Professional Motivation test, which is fully automated on the Smart Way platform. From our article “Motivation test. Motivational types and how to work with them.” you will learn how to motivate employees of different types and what demotivates them.

Having information on each employee of the company, what exactly motivates and demotivates them, the HR employee should provide each manager with a summary table, where the name of the subordinate is in the first column, the factors that motivate him/her in the second, and the factors that demotivate him/her in the third.

Communicate the importance of non-financial motivation to managers, explain why it is important and how it will affect performance, and ask how it works at least once a month so that managers do not forget to motivate their employees and remember what demotivates them.

Resource

Perhaps someone thought that we are talking about the material resources needed for work? And you'd be right, you need to provide your staff with all the necessary material resources, but this is not about them. It is important that employees have enough emotional resources. This is about burnout. The more productive an employee is, the faster they will burn out. In order not to lose the most productive employees, you need to monitor their level of burnout using the “Level of Professional Burnout” test, which is fully automated on the Smart Way platform. Conduct testing centrally once every six months, and individually when you see that something is wrong with an employee. If the level of burnout is above average, give the employee a break. Depending on their motivational type, encourage and motivate them more. Create corporate programmes to reduce burnout, such as subscriptions to fitness centres, corporate English courses, just going to the movies, and so on, but don't force your staff to participate, let them choose what they want.

Conclusion

By following these simple steps, on an ongoing basis, you will eventually create a productive and motivated team where people will enjoy working and grow your company! It's a “long game” and a strategy that needs to be followed all the time. It may take more than a month or even a year to implement, but by creating such an ecosystem, you will ensure the company's sustainable development and high employee satisfaction.