All edges of motivation: how to boost employees' morale

Eagerness of employees to work enthusiastically can be called a rare phenomenon. People adapt, fade away, become apathetic, their passions dwindle. You want to encourage, inspire them, and make their eyes glow. Mundane bonuses eventually cause unresponsiveness.

You should encourage employees for achievements matching objectives of business owners. If you think otherwise, then probably:
- you are a startup founder, who does not have resources to recruit qualified employess;
- your business passed through the stage of “aristocracy”, your staff is underperforming, “steroids” are needed;
- you believe in existence of intangible, complimentary motives to work.

As soon as you begin to pay extra for so-called good job premiums will instantly become an expected part of the salary. The system starts working implicitly focusing only on personal gain: no reward – no results. It is hard to stimulate workforce in times of crisis: as a rule, it happens that the units received their bonus while the owners have earned almost nothing.

The attempts to encourage employees with certificates during staff meeting, thank-you speeches after corporate anthem crash to bits like the Titanic on the iceberg of common practicality.

Corporate entertainments such as paintball, dinner parties with families, picnic outdoors organized by the company management usually end with watercooler talks: “It would have been better if they had given the money”. Vouchers to resorts also have drawbacks: some employees have no visa, some – nobody to go with, others have already visited that country. The invited pop-stars to also do not please much.

There comes the moment of exhaustion, when the management has already tried all their efficient ideas, and the sated staff have become profoundly feather-bedded. Clinch. Dead-end. Desperation.

Motivation may achieve a complex of objectives:
- high productivity – hard-bitten precise rhythm
- low costs – managing faults and work stoppage
- stable workforce – reduction of employee turnover
- excellent service – splendid quality of goods and services
- protecting confidential information – keeping trade secrets safe.

Personally, I strongly believe in financial motivation. In the end, certificates, recording anthem, organizing a brunch cost money. The best option that I have ever planned was distributing net profit from a single sale equally among three parties:
- business owner
- one of 12 directors whose employee closed a deal
- employee who served client and charged full price.

The beauty of this approach is the fact that the best ones stay afloat and the worst – drown. Those who came to make money – can work continuously and the sky is not the limit for the size of the bonuses. Those who cannot adjust to the sweating system get less, turn sour and leave the ship. The market gets a clear message from the company:
- careerists and ambitious ones would hear a signal that they can earn here
- sideliners will stay away from the company.

“The black spot” can boost natural selection in major teams of massive placements such as shop assistants, call-center representatives, parcel packers in online stores. Cross-cutting concerns are applied to the employee-performance rating system even if there are several shifts or skill-groups. The worst 20% or 30% of the scale get “the black spots”. Colleagues who receive the mark for 3 periods in a row are fired.

In one of the projects, the leading 50% of 150 workers have accomplished 89% of the quarterly work plan. Eliminating the bottom half of the rankings and implementing motivation of “the sky is not the limit” has led to the increase of:
- payroll by 32%
- plan execution by 113%.

Actually, workforce reduction of 75 employees and the increase of rewards by one third have resulted in growth of company’s performance to 102% whereas savings on payroll were 34%.

However, not everyone can adapt to capitalism of pure reason, so let us analyze the opposite example of corporate reward and recognition system. Workers of the fashion clothing boutiques conglomerate get a bonus pool amounted to 25 percent of their total net salaries for self-management. In one month everyone gives reward points to colleagues for help, friendly attitude and willingness to compromise.

At the end of the month, the reward is calculated dividing the bonus pool by the total amount of reward points. The advantage of this system is an opportunity to help colleagues in need in case of diseases, marriage, and birth of children. The disadvantages of the bonus pool system are inevitable corruption, the devaluation of reward points because of their galloping “production”.

In addition to individual indicators, the motivation system should provide for the group ones as well. A careless order processing operator may quickly put together his part of palettes, having littered articles among adjacent fields of the warehouse index space. If this happens, it will be more difficult or almost impossible for co-workers of such pseudo-overachiever to do their work properly.

Personal motivation sooner or later establish employee mental set: “after me, let the deluge come”. In order to prevent employees from ruining the organization, constraints reins of group indicators are required. Unwillingness to disappoint the group, the shift by voluntary obedience to nondestructive rules becomes a bridle.

A good motivation system should be:
- fair – no footnotes, sub-points;
- transparent – bonuses are easily calculated;
- equitable – achievements and fails influence promotions;
- beneficial – employees understand expediency and correlation with results;
- achievable – 70% of co-workers should be able to fulfill the plan in usual mode, not in crunch one.

In the real world there is no black or white – we are surrounded with incredible diversity. The same is in motivation systems:
- it is short-sighted to rely on materiality – you will quickly find out that all left except a bunch of greedy overbearing employees who unethically crop the business and each other;
- you are unequally keen on intangible rewards – malcontents will surround you.

Start looking for preferable motivation, try, experiment, combine and do not stop – even the most delicious gets boring.

Author: Oleg Braginsky
Translation: Marina Alexandrova
Source: New Retail