How to motivate employees

From the lounge-chair sports expert to the company CEO, most people have definite views on what motivates others - and they’re probably right, in part at least. Valiant attempts to convert theory into practice, however, have not always succeeded in getting people to give that little extra. The outcome often is a reversion to manipulative and kick-in-the-backside approaches. From the plethora of information and advice about motivation, here are the essential principles...

1. Understand motivation.

Ultimately, there are only two types of motivation - people do what they do either out of love or out of fear. Many go to work because they fear what will happen if they don’t. Others go because they love it, the sense of achievement they get, the opportunity to meet with friends. Your challenge is to help employees love their work.

2. Focus on job enrichment.

Frederick Herzberg advocated enriching people’s jobs as a principal motivator. By making the job more enjoyable, you will ensure that:

it will provide challenges commensurate with the employee's skills
the employee with more ability will be able to stand out and win promotion to higher-level jobs
there will be long-term improvements in employee attitudes.

Though not all jobs can be enriched (nor do they need to be), through job enrichment big gains can be made.