Before selecting suitable techniques, managers should be aware of the impact staff motivation has on the company. Employees who are highly motivated, work hard and participate towards high productivity rates in the company. Employees who lack motivation are more liable to make mistakes and can affect the quality of the company’s output. This is why it is important for managers to maintain high levels of motivation among staff by using a suitable technique. But not all employees respond positively for the same technique. Thus, a range of techniques should be used to make this effort more productive. Listed below are some of the answers to the age old question of how to motivate staff.

Build satisfaction

Employee motivation and satisfaction correlate with each other. In other words, a person who is motivated will be satisfied with his/her work and the company’s standards. In the same way, a person who is satisfied will be motivated to perform better. So ideally, greater levels of job satisfaction will result in high levels of motivation. There are several ways in which you can satisfy your employees. These include providing better working conditions and appreciating performance.

Recognize efforts

Any remarkable achievement of an employee must be rewarded. This will show that the company values and appreciates the individual’s efforts. There are two main types of organizational rewards, monetary and non-monetary rewards. Monetary rewards are incentives, bonuses, rise in salary, etc; On the other hand, non-monetary rewards include recognizing the hard work, public appreciation of efforts, praise and respect from colleagues, etc. Offering ‘employee of the month’ reward is a commonly used technique in many organizations.

Set challenges

Once an employee is given a goal to achieve, his/her work becomes target-oriented. Organizational psychologists state that target-oriented behavior produces greater results than other methods. You must ensure that these goals are challenging yet achievable. Giving a long-term goal will sustain the employee’s motivation levels for the long-term. For example, a salesperson who is asked to reach a target of $1000 per month will only show good results in that particular month. If you wish to see satisfactory performance throughout, you must offer a different target level each month depending on the company’s sales.

Provide training

This particular technique offers multiple benefits. Firstly, staff training improves the standards and efficiency of the employees. This in turn will affect the company’s output and sales positively. When organizations conduct training programs for their employees, the latter believe that the company is genuinely interested in their well-being since it is making quite an investment in them through the program. This will increase the employee’s loyalty towards the company and will eventually motivate him/her to perform better.

There are several other ways in which you can increase employee motivation. Creating a positive working environment, providing modern technological equipment, offering vacations and profit-sharing programs are some of the commonly used techniques across many organizations. Whatever the technique is, it must be implemented over a long course of time since job motivation should never be used as a temporary solution to increase job performance.