How Do You Motivate the Modern Employee?

In the modern workplace, motivating employees takes more than just words of encouragement. It now entails facilitating difficult conversations between staff members and fostering happiness amongst them which translates to increased productivity, increased bottom line and increased retention of staff.

Motivating employees is essential for:

• Ensuring employees are happy and excited about the tasks they perform which leads to greater productivity
• Assisting in employee retention which greatly reduces the costs involved for sourcing and training new recruitments
• Helping to develop a strong, positive culture between staff members and the workplace

Head of People and Culture here at Morrows, Nicole Easton (along with a number of others), recently spoke with Xero to discuss, three key areas about how we try to keep employees motivated and happy:

Promoting Organisational Values

Internalising core values within an organisation can help to support the company’s vision and communicate exactly what is expected of employees. These values help to educate clients and potential clients about what the organisation stands for and how they identify themselves. Effective recruitment and onboarding processes are crucial to reinforcing those values as it helps each employee understand their role and how it uniquely links to the purpose of the firm from day one.

An accountability framework is also encouraged as it reinforces to staff members to further think about these values and hold each other accountable to those values by providing knowledge that can help people get engrained in the culture which inspires employee motivation.

Reward and Retain

Often people assume that the greatest reward is monetary, however it has become clear that a motivating reward is now more than just a pay check. Developing a strong professional relationship between staff members by incorporating social aspects such as events and activities as well as training opportunities to further develop their skills for the future. Notably, it is important to allow the employee to be involved in as much or as little as they want in order to engage the motivated individuals rather than making it a chore.

On a day to day basis, it is important to make employees feel that the role they play is adding value to the company by establishing their sense of purpose and self-fulfilment in the workplace.

Active Listening

Encouraging employees to get to know each other on a personal level can help them to feel more connected so they are more willing and comfortable to raise any issues with each other. Developing an empathetic and understanding environment, employee engagement, motivation and happiness will increase and make people feel a greater connection to the organisation.

For the full interview click on the video below: