Business motivation. Principles and tools of employee motivation
If we talk about motivation, then there is a main misconception that motivation is money and finances, it is not. Less than 10% of people are motivated by money, so when working with a team, you need to clearly understand the motive of each of the employees with whom we interact so as not to repeat the fate of the heroes of our last article.
Proactive and passive employees: principles of motivation
First, there are proactive and passive people. Active people themselves understand what they need to do and do it. Passive people need to be told specifically what to do and how to get the result.
In order to clearly identify motivation, you need to divide your team according to these characteristics. For example, you can not take a proactive accountant, storekeeper or packer. These should be people with a clear task and result. Therefore, the approach to motivating each of the employees should be different.
If we talk about proactive people, then they are often motivated by the result and development. They like to do a lot, solve problems, be useful, realize their ideas and creativity. You need to clearly understand the motive of each of them and focus on it. If we motivate a salesperson, then this is not always work for money. We can charge it with the nobleness of our goal: the more customers get our product, the more they will benefit, and it has an important mission in this matter. The competitive effect helps better – “this month you had such results, and this month you had such results.” This is where long-term motivation helps. You need to use the excitement factor. For example, if he closes certain indicators in 3 months, he will receive a bonus. Perhaps not even the bonus itself will motivate, but the desire to maintain performance. Someone is motivated by the stick method, and someone by the carrot. Someone is motivated only by punishment and you need to understand this.
There is a principled position of some people, and they themselves do not realize it. These are often creative people. When working with designers, for example, we often scold them for missing all the deadlines, but they can’t help it. You also need to be prepared for this, and you need to be able to release good anger on them. That is, do not go into polemics and open disputes, but use these weapons effectively to achieve common goals. And, when they already give results, they must be praised.
Passive people are motivated by calmness, comfort and tasks that are clear in their work. They have a clear plan, clear objectives and a clear understanding of the result. The result should not be abstract, but tangible. It is difficult to motivate such a person with abstract positions, for example: “this will be good” or “someone will like this.” Most often, they are motivated precisely by what can be felt, counted. They must understand what kind of work they need to do, and not what result to get from this work. If we want to work with them, we need to decompose tasks well in order to tell them a detailed plan of action and intermediate results at each of the stages.
How to identify the motivation of an employee?
Secondly, let’s highlight some of the main motives that motivate people to act: realization of creativity, power and influence, strategic interest, fulfillment of a dream, charity, scientific research, money.
For creative work, we will hire a person who burns with this, motivating him with the fact that he can realize himself. You can hire several people, give them a task and say that the best work will be appreciated. Also talk about where it will be applied, and what is the scope of its application, in order to motivate a person to give his best.
Power and influence is for working with people who solve high-level issues or in the first person: working with clients or partners. These people are motivated by managing others and being able to perform well.
Strategic interest motivates those who want to open their own business in the future, for example, a clothing brand. He can learn a lot from us, and we must “charge” him with this.
The fulfillment of a dream is about those who dream, they are charged with the energy of the leader, his successes, they want to join this and go to work with just such a goal.
Charity is a conversation about higher interests and values. A brand always has its own values, and we can motivate employees with one of them: caring for the environment, protecting animals, helping various segments of the population. If our values match, the employee will work based on them. Such people often work in politics, they like to solve problems. They are the best performers because their motivation is very sincere. But you can easily part ways with them if they have doubts about the sincerity of our values.
Scientific research is a good higher goal. This includes conducting scientific analysis, introducing new products, improving product quality and increasing company efficiency. Often such people want to perpetuate their name in the development of something new. They can be motivated by the fact that your company is the only one that works in a way that is interesting to him and that you really need his vision.
If we talk about money, then we personally pay salaries 3-4 times higher than the market for those whose work is tied to production. We have a minimum salary, but very high percentages, so that people stay for processing, go out on weekends, holidays and a pandemic.
In order to motivate an employee, we must first of all understand what position we are looking for and what we need from him – proactivity or stability. Further, at the interview stage, with the help of a series of questions, his interests and his character are revealed. The simplest question to ask is: “What is the result of your work?”. If a person describes the process, then this is a stable employee. If he describes the real result, then he is a proactive person. For example, if a person answers the question “What is the result of the work of a cleaner?” replies that this is garbage removed, then it is a stable type. And if he answers that this is a clean room, then he is proactive.
Then you need to identify his motive – for what purpose he came. This is also done with the help of interview questions. These may be questions about his life, about his goal, about previous achievements. And depending on the results obtained, we distribute it in relation to our needs.
Test, communicate, guide. Your employee is your tool. And only its correct application will give you a good result.
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