Your Employees Can Work 2.5 Times More Efficiently
2017-08-04
Do you know what motivates your employees?Effective motivation system is necessary not only for increasing staff efficiency but also for bringing the biggest profit for company owners.
Sometimes it seems that you only need to tie labor compensation to its effectiveness. However, material motivation, starting with piecework rate and ending with complex multi-stage systems for calculation of bonuses, often does not provide the desired productivity growth. Even after realizing how one can earn more, employees continue to spend time in smoking rooms, come late, have constant coffee breaks, and gossip in the corridors - they just do not work. Is it a paradox?
Why in some companies with lower payment rate there are only loyal and hardworking employees and in other companies employees work lazily for a higher level of salary? And at the same time, the replacement of one employee with another one does not change anything. Internal surveys, built on standard questionnaires, rarely give an answer to this question.
What will happen if you raise the salaries? Will the loyalty of employees and speed and quality of tasks be increased? Of course, the employees will assure that it will be increased, but the facts say that the material motivation isn't always the game changer.
Even a cohesive team is not always a guarantee of high productivity. Excellent relationships can even hinder effective work.
Engagement as a motivation factor
Work enthusiasm consists of a number of hard-to-measure indicators which are called engagement. It is the engagement that brings up in employees the feeling of responsibility for results, the readiness to work not out of fear of punishment. Realizing yourself as a part of the common cause is an important element of labor motivation.
The state of engagement includes material interest, but this is just one of the factors.
How do the subordinates feel about their management? Do they consider that the boss is qualified, do they respect him or her, are they ready to follow him or her or are they sure that the boss does not deserve to e in this position and just sits in the office, doing nothing? And what about the managers, do they work effectively? Are they able to inspire their team?
Do employees know the company's strategic goals? This question can cause confusion. Why should a janitor understand the development strategy? However, if you don’t know where you are going, it will be difficult to reach the goal. If every employee of the organization has their own way, the effect will be much smaller than the general movement in one direction.
Do employees understand the production process? Where do the semi-products in the work shop come from and where do the finished parts go? How important is the clarity and timeliness of their work? Are they sure that everything is organized in an optimal way, or do they just see endless failures and delays because of the errors of their management?
Do your subordinates feel their own importance, the importance of each one of them for business? After all, even washing the floors in the work shop can be done proudly because it is the place where people do such necessary things and keeping floors clean is very important. Is this a fairytale? But after all, there are such janitors who perceive every visitor as their personal guest, who rub the floors cheerfully, because they want everyone to feel pleasant and cozy.
How to make your employees happy
Happy people spread around a special aura. They are ready to share the happiness with others. They sing, doing the work, which they consider to be important and necessary to other people. They rejoice at the success of their company and are ready to contribute to it.
Happy employees are satisfied with the level of payment and consider it fair. They respect the boss and appreciate their subordinates and colleagues. And for the sake of this feeling of happiness and confidence in their own importance, they will show loyalty to the company, will not be tempted by other offers. Such employee is a boss’ dream!
What to do with your employees to make them feel their involvement in the business, how to make them happy? To begin with, it is necessary to find out what they like and what they don't like. And then, depending on the results, you can slowly start changing the working conditions: introduce one change then measure the result. If changes are for the better you can continue to move in the same direction.
If you still consider that your employees are just "cogs in the machine" and don't care for their happiness and engagement, then the following fact might make you change your mind. “Top Fortune 500” studies showed that the profit of companies with high employee engagement is on average 2.5 times higher than the profit of similar companies with low engagement. It turns out that engagement is quite a material thing after all.
