Disengaged employees cost organizations millions of dollars. Unfortunately, most managers don’t know what to do to increase their employees’ motivation.

But what is motivation? Motivation is the motive behind the action. It is what drives someone to act, it is a set of factors that direct a person’s action towards a goal. Motivation is internal to each individual. Which means:

 that you cannot force someone to be motivated;

• that you cannot force someone to adapt to the wishes of others;
• that you cannot force someone to be motivated in their work;
• that it is possible, as a manager, to create an environment that will encourage people to be motivated.

Then comes mobilization, which is a call for concerted action by a team to achieve a common goal. To achieve this, there must be something of enough interest to induce the person to act.

To mobilize your employees, they must first be motivated. What motivates a person to climb Everest, or learn a foreign language, or do their job well? Again, these answers will be different for each of us.

Let’s get back to basics. As a manager, simply ask yourself: what motivates my employees to act?

To answer that, you need to know your people in order to understand what motivates them. Then, take the actions that work best with each of them.

There is no turnkey solution. There are as many possible ways to engage your staff as there are employees. You will need to put working conditions in place to motivate them, conditions that will of course satisfy the management in place. You must explore and try, make mistakes. Put in the effort and the time to find the strategies that best fit your business. It may even be necessary to accept changes, a new culture and a corporate philosophy.

Concretely, what does that mean?  Here are some examples.

• Value people and their contribution to the organization.
• Take an interest in them, for real!
• Know their strengths and weaknesses and use their strengths.
• Share information.
• Give common goals.
• Emphasize teamwork, collective decision-making, team autonomy and cooperation.
• Say thank you!
• Implement policies and activities such as flexible hours.
• Manage conflicts.
• Foster trust and respect.
• Support your employees.
• Etc.

If you want to know more, sign up for our “Become an excellent manager” training course. Contact us.

See you soon.

Liza