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1. Replace annual performance reviews with everyday recognition and coaching
2. Don’t use if-then cash rewards; they aren’t effective for complex, creative, and conceptual work
3. Encourage your employees to recognize each other
4. Provide choice with reward selection – years of service awards actively disengage employees
5. Infuse the workplace with a sense of mission
6. Foster mastery and purpose in your employees
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Drive-ing Performance: What the Science of Motivation Can Teach You About High Performance
INTRODUCTION
Understanding how to communicate with, drive, and motivate today’s employees are critical to business success. To get results, boost employee engagement, and make excellence a part of company culture, it is necessary for organizations to adopt Motivation 3.0. The world has evolved, along with the workforce demographic, but companies’ recognition practices have remained the same. Reaching peak performance comes with an understanding of what constitutes Motivation 3.0.
Money is a motivator. Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: money is categorized as humans’ base needs. Being paid competitively is fundamental to a human’s need for security, followed by their need for esteem. Money does not drive motivation entirely, but employees must feel fairly compensated in addition to being recognized. McKinsey’s study illustrates that, people with satisfactory salaries conclude that long-term employee engagement comes from non-monetary motivating factors. Assuming that your salaries are satisfactory, how do employers motivate their workforce non-monetarily?
Effective management is critical to driving motivation. A historical interpretation of successful management is defined as the ability to obtain compliance from employees. The science of motivation overrules this notion by illustrating a significant gap between compliance and engagement. The key to successfully building employee engagement is by instilling autonomy in employees. People do not engage by having control over their own technique, their own team, and their own tasks. It is proven that people who have autonomy over these aspects at work consistently achieve results; employees engage with high standards, coupled with autonomy.
Many companies who have effectively achieved this level of engagement have provided their employees with a ROWE atmosphere (Results Only Work Environment). Employees are responsible and held accountable to their work, but their means of achievement are irrelevant (ie: it does not matter where or when the employee completes the work). Rewards are based on end-achievements, and motivate employees to attain results. Companies who practice this strategy must be wary of discounting the experience of achieving the results. Implementing peer-to-peer recognition provides harmony, as employees can be recognized on and ongoing basis.
For a business to successfully drive motivation in the workplace, it is critical to embrace the demands of a workforce dominated by Gen X and Gen Y employees, and move away from dated recognition techniques. Here is how employers can foster employee engagement and drive results through exercising effective means of motivation:
Drive Motivation:
1. Replace annual performance reviews with everyday recognition and coaching
Annual performance reviews are dated means of providing feedback in the workplace. Gen Y employees have grown up in an era that is entirely influenced by technology; feedback is immediately available in an abundance of forms of communication. When this generation graduates into the workplace, where most organizations remain feedback deserts, employees are rewarded for their presence, not their results. This short-termism practice is a de-motivator. By acknowledging employees on a regular basis, positive performance is encouraged; and what gets recognized, gets repeated. Everyday recognition will motivate your employees, resulting in positive behaviors and retention at your company.
2. Don’t use if-then cash rewards; they aren’t effective for complex, creative, and conceptual work
“If-then” cash rewards are an ineffective means of driving results. While this motivation technique may prove to be effective for simple tasks with distinct rules, it is not a long-termism means of driving performance. Gen Y has proven to be motivated by intangible, experiential rewards. In a recent Class of 2011 Study, conducted by I Love Rewards, the top-ranked preferred reward was travel. This aligns with scientific research that shows that the effects of tangible rewards are shorter than the effects of experiential rewards. By moving away from “if-then” cash rewards, employers will shed the short-termism mentality and drive long-termism behaviors.
3. Encourage your employees to recognize each other
How can employers motivate a multi-generational workforce? By allowing employees to recognize each other, organization-wide. Free peer-to-peer recognition is the purist form of recognition – all employees like to be recognized for a job well done, but recognition from one’s peers always has a special significance due to sincerity. Empower your employees to motivate each other by giving your workforce the tools and encouragement to recognize their peers’ successes. By providing a recognition solution where peers can immediately provide colleagues with specific feedback, employees are driven to achieve results to impress their peers.
4. Provide choice with reward selection – years of service awards actively disengage employees
Today’s workforce has evolved; Gen X and Gen Y employees now occupy over 50% of the workplace. This new demographics’ recognition demands trump old workplace traditions. Despite workforce advancements, companies’ recognition tactics have remained the same, hindering the ability to retain top talent. While 92% of companies still offer a Years of Service recognition platform, only 17% of employees actually want this program. The most effective way to drive long-term performance is to provide employees with an intrinsic motivator – the ability to choose their own rewards. Empowering employees to redeem for what is of value to them is enjoyable experience, motivating the employee to perform the activity that resulted in this outcome again.
5. Infuse the workplace with a sense of mission
The Employee Engagement Model demonstrates that most great companies who have high employee engagement have based their foundation on their sense of corporate culture. While each of these corporate cultures are distinct, all are designed intentionally and are mirrored with the company’s core values. Align your recognition practices with your corporate culture to infuse your employees with a sense of mission. Be mindful that employees who act with ownership are not only nurtured, it is also their nature. While higher engagement can increase autonomy, employers should hire employees whose DNA aligns with the corporate DNA.
6. Foster mastery and purpose in your employees
Instilling a sense of mastery and purpose in your employees will further motivate your workforce to act with a sense of ownership. Humans are inherently driven to get better at our jobs, but only engagement can produce mastery – suddenly, becoming better at our jobs actually matters. Because recognition validates employee performance, constant feedback is a necessity to engagement and mastery. Create a culture of recognition, where recognition becomes part of a rhythm to exercise consistency. This can be created through weekly 1-on-1s, recognition education with leadership teams, recognizing your managers when they recognize their teams, company luncheons, President’s Club incentive, or on-the-spot recognition.
Employees want to know that they are contributing to the company’s overall vision. Continuous recognition will validate their sense of belonging and purpose. While most leaders focus on the “how” their employees are achieving results, employees also want to understand the “why” they are working on specific tasks. Frequent meetings will serve as a feedback outlet to instill purpose in your workforce. Align your feedback with the company’s overall objectives. The most deeply motivated people – not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied – hitch their desires to a cause larger themselves.
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