How to Keep Employees Motivated

HiringThing prides itself on being an employee-centric workplace. We're a people-oriented company that believes empowering our workforce not only makes HiringThing someplace our employees want to work and stay, but also leads to better productivity, heightened creativity, a better product, and increased financial rewards for everyone. In order to create that employee-centric workplace, it's crucial you keep your employees motivated and engaged. Here's how we do that: 

Tips for Motivating Employees

Imbue Your Employees With a Sense of Ownership

Imbuing your employees with a sense of ownership in your business naturally motivates them to perform—a sense of ownership creates both a sense of pride and belonging. 

How do we do this?  Being transparent and openly sharing information is a good start. When you were growing up, did you ever ask your parents, “But why?” only to have them answer you with “Because I said so?" When a manager withholds information from employees, it sends the message to the employees that they aren’t important enough to get an explanation. Sharing information with your employees is a way to show them you respect and value them as contributing members of your team.

Communicating things like current challenges, successes, and the rationale behind changes you make to company policies, will result in employees that:

• Have a better understanding of your business and can make more informed decisions.
• Feel like part of a team rather than someone who just punches in and punches out every day which will provide them with motivation to perform well at no cost to you.
• Are happier at work because they feel valued which will save you money by reducing your staff turnover and also likely improve your client retention rates because happier employees generally provide better customer service.

Here at HiringThing, our founder Joshua Siler has fostered a strong sense of open communication with the entire staff by holding biweekly “all hands” team meetings where everyone is encouraged to participate.

Trust Your Employees

Theorist Frederick Herzberg determined that the main motivators for people are feelings of having done a good job, being appreciated, and trusted. 

Hydraulic valve manufacturer Sun Hydraulics has blazed a new trail in the world of HR by throwing out the entire concept of organizational hierarchy and trusting its employees to make their own decisions on how best to contribute to the organization’s success. Elimination of vertical hierarchy has resulted in a flat, horizontal structure that does away with the traditional “parent-child” relationship of manager to employee and replaces it with a more equal “adult-adult” relationship. The only title anyone in the company has is the honorary title of Plant Manager which, contrary to what you would think of a hydraulics manufacturer, has nothing to do with management and everything to do with being responsible for watering the hundreds of live plants that hang from the eco-friendly manufacturing facility ceilings!

Maybe you aren’t ready to abolish titles yet (we're not!). You can still achieve a sense of trust and responsibility by clearly communicating with your employees what their responsibilities are and letting them use the skill set you hired them for to decide how to best achieve their goals. Make sure they have the tools at their disposal to get their jobs done and leave them to it. After all, that’s what you’ve hired them to do.

An Example of Trust from a Company You Know

FedEx puts the responsibility of determining the best and most efficient driving route in the hands of its drivers. There’s no dispatcher sitting in a corporate office somewhere sending out route guidance. It’s up to the individual driver to figure it out for themselves. Their rationale? Who knows the best routes and most efficient way to get their job done? A driver who spends 8 hours a day driving the routes or a dispatcher who sits in an office all day? That's also how we operate here at HiringThing.

Praise Early, Praise Often, and Praise in a Relevant Manner

Herzberg and Elton Mayo , another theorist and founder of the Human Relations movement, both agree that positive attention from management is a significant motivator for employees. Giving employees praise is a great way to motivate at no cost to an organization and studies have shown that some people are more motivated by praise and recognition than by money.

However, ensure you're giving individual praise that lets employees know you recognize the good work they're doing. What's more effective? A blanket, "what a rockstar—you're killing it!" to every employee no matter what task they're doing, or stopping a customer service rep and telling them, "Both I and our customers appreciate how you articulate any product changes clearly and effectively!"

Making a habit of giving the employees you manager specific praise will also help make you a more observant and present manager.

Communicating on a regular basis to your employees that they are doing a good job gives them a strong sense of satisfaction with their own work, improves their self-confidence and goes a long way to making them feel happy at work. Happy employees make for productive employees. This means better efficiency for your business.

Compensate Employees for Their Hard Work

You can share information, give meaningful praise and imbue your employees with a high level of trust and responsibility but if you don’t offer adequate compensation and provide a safe, comfortable working environment, you will still end up with dissatisfied employees.

About HiringThing

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