Managing work motivation isn’t always an easy task, especially when employees nowadays are faced with many uncertainties on the world stage. All of this means that HR managers are needing to focus even more attention on employee motivation and how to manage it. After the holidays and in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis it’s even more important than ever.
It’s essential that your workers reconnect with the company with force and are not discouraged by external agents. It is true that in recent months we have experienced many changes, such as adjusting to working remotely. In addition, many employees are feeling uncertainty linked to the health crisis.
However, the role of a Human Resources manager becomes relevant at this time, since they are in charge of creating strategies and maintaining work motivation in the company so that it continues.
Next, we are going to see what work motivation is about and what we can put in place to improve our employee satisfaction and improve
- Work motivation: definition y tips to motivate your employees
- Key Factors determining work motivation
- 5 steps to manage the return to work process and improve work motivation
- Use job coaching to motivate employees
- âś… Improve Employee Management with an HR program
Work Motivation: Definition & Types
The term “personal motivation” has been used a lot in recent months, especially to promote teleworking, but also to face the state of uncertainty due to the Coronavirus situation and now when many staff are returning to work after the holidays. But, what exactly does is work motivation it?
What is work motivation?
Work motivation, according to the definition of William P. Sexton in his book, Organization Theories is:
👉 “The process of stimulating an individual to take action that meets some of their needs and achieves a desired goal for the motivator”.
According to a study by the University of Warwick, which analyzes happiness and productivity, it indicates that a happy employee is 12% more productive. Also, another Harvard study shows that a disgruntled or toxic employee can harm team dynamics.
Within the “culture of happiness”, people who are more motivated at work collaborate more and absenteeism is lower. That is why work motivation is so important because it can change the future of a company.
What types of motivation exist?
According to the psychologist Edward L. Deci y Richard M. Ryan, two types of work motivation exist:
#1 – Intrinsic Motivation: this is the motivation that comes from the employee himself and is not determined by any external factors. One example could be personal satisfaction.
#2 – Extrinsic Motivation: this is the motivation that is increased by external factors that drive the employee to work harder. Examples of this type of work motivation can be anything from a salary increase or recognition in the company.
Key Factors Determining Work Motivation
Perhaps you have never stopped to think why one employee is more motivated than another or why there are some who are more participatory and contribute more to the company.
It all depends on the people, but also in large part on how they feel in the company. Therefore, we will distinguish the main factors that can determine the work motivation of an employee:
Feeling comfortable in your job
On certain occasions, employees don’t feel comfortable in the job they are. This could either be due to the fact their tasks are not aligned with their skill set or because they don’t see growth within the company.
Having autonomy over your tasks
Employees who place more value on making decisions, contribute ideas and take on responsibilities. In this way, the worker feels like an integral part of the team.
Enjoying a good working environment
It is vital that the work environment in your company is positive so that everything flows better and communication between employees is easier. To boost the relationship between them, you can create after-work events to encourage having a drink together after work.
Working in good conditions
As we’ve seen before, happy employees make a company more productive. However, an employee’s working conditions also determine their motivation. Some examples may be salary, flexible hours, work-life balance, objective bonuses, etc.
Establishing an effective onboarding plan
Ensuring new employees get off to a good start in the company is essential. For this reason, it is so important to have a good onboarding plan for newcomers to the company. With an effective onboarding plan, they will feel integrated and motivated from the beginning. This plan not only tries to orient the new workers in the company but also to monitor them to see how they feel and if they are well integrated into the workforce, as well as into the dynamics of the company.
5 steps to manage the return to work process and improve work motivation
Work motivation is not only about spreading beautiful words around the office to improve the productivity of your company, it has to go further, and, for this, you must make a whole plan to increase motivation with action, not just words.
Here are 7 steps to create your work motivation plan for your employees:
Design a professional development plan
Surely your employees want to continue training within the company, to be able to acquire new soft skills and scale within it. To do this, you can assess the responsibilities of each one and offer new responsibilities. You could also study the possibility of rotating tasks so that employees better understand the company and what each one performs.
Encourage communication
To motivate an employee, sometimes it is only necessary to listen to him/her to be able to know what their concerns or aspirations are within the company. Thus, you can offer them what they are looking for. To create these moments of communication, it is essential that workers see their bosses or group leaders as close and accessible.
Recognize the merits of your employees
Sometimes we focus on pointing out employee mistakes so that the company improves, but we don’t always remember to congratulate our workers on the achievements.
Recognizing merits is a very positive practice. It not only motivates the employee to continue on the path of success, but it also brings out happiness and satisfaction.
Establish a training plan
It can happen that workers feel frustrated or stagnant since they do not receive the necessary training in their jobs, which could help them to perform their tasks.
It’s also true that training could be sought outside of work, but if we want our workers to be up-to-date and have the appropriate knowledge, we will have to invest working hours so that they continue to train.
Offer an emotional salary
Not everything can be paid with money, but it can be paid in kind, it is what we call “emotional salary” within the company. More and more companies are standing by the worker’s side and offering them more flexibility.
For example, companies often allow employees to adjust the time they start work, in order to maintain a better work-life balance. Remember that the greatest capital that a company has is human, therefore, try to take care of it and offer it everything in your power to promote its motivation and commitment to the company.
Use job coaching to motivate employees
Sometimes the performance of your workers can be altered for different reasons, that is why job coaching can help us find the real cause of an employee’s law of motivation. Coaching in the workplace will also equip staff with new tools to help them excel.
What is workplace coaching?
Today, coaching is on the rise and can be applied to many areas, however, the one that concerns us is the work environment.
For this reason, job coaching is the one that focuses on helping people by motivating them so that they can develop in the work environment and be happier.
Putting workplace coaching in practice
#1 –Asking the employee about how he/she feels at their job
Communication is essential to be able to detect why our employee feels unmotivated. To do this, prepare some questions and find a quiet place to talk (it can be outside the office over a coffee).
Some sample questions might be:
- Are you comfortable with your job?
- Are you comfortable with the salary you receive?
- What would you like to do in your job?
- What are your aspirations within the company?
#2 – Follow up with the employee
After having asked the questions and done your best to solve the needs of our employees, the next step is to follow up. To do this, you can arrange meetings from time to time to assess how their motivation improves.
In case you do not see an improvement, you can sit down with him/her again and try to detect the reason behind the lack of motivation within the company.
What should we keep in mind when doing job coaching?
- Not all employees are comfortable with their job or in the company. This can be determined by the remuneration, the hours they work, or the work environment, among others.
- A worker will always give the best they have to offer and their work will be carried out thanks to the tools they have and their knowledge.
- We should not judge, since each person is different. Therefore, in order to help we have to listen and know the other person’s point of view.
- Sometimes we can find that the lack of motivation is not because of the company, but because of external agents, be it their family or health situation.
Use an All-in-one HR program to improve management with your workers
Payroll, contracts, time off, time tracking, shift management, expense, etc. Do these tasks sound familiar to you? You could automate them through Human Resources software, such as Factorial, which offers you a free trial period.
Here’s everything you can get with HR software:
- Vacation and absence management: control the leaves, absences and vacations of all employees to better organize the workforce.
- Time tracking and shift management: now the tracking of employee hours will be much easier, faster and safer.
- Custom HR reports: get interesting data and information and generate reports automatically.
- Document management: forget paper and store all your employees’ information digitally.
- Electronic signature: now your employees can sign documents without being physically in the office.
- Payroll incidents: the HR program records all incidents that affect your company’s payroll.
- Employee portal: this is a space designed for each employee from where all documents and information can be managed.
- Organization chart of your company: Organize the company through an organization chart that will be very useful for new employees.
- Recruitment and selection of personnel (ATS): manage to attract talent through a customizable and centralized employment portal.
