The techniques can be of two types :
1) Financial
2) Non Financial
1.Financial
tools used to motivate staff
- Financial techniques refer to monetary rewards. Incentives are
nothing but the inducements provided to employees in order to
motivate them.
- There should be direct relationship between efforts and
rewards, financial reward should be substantial in value and must
be in parity with others.
- Under -paying staff sends the message that your firm doesn’t
value their work.
- Money is not a prime motivator but this should not be regarded
as a signal to reward employees poorly or unfairly.
The financial incentives include:
1. Pay and Allowances:
- It includes basic pay, grade pay, and dearness allowance;
travelling allowance, pay increments, etc.
- Good pay and allowances help the organization to retain and
attract capable persons.
- However, good pay and allowances need not motivate all the
people, especially who are enjoying security of job in government
organizations and those for whom corruption is a way of life.
[Some of the other issues are associated with bad attitudes,
grievances, absenteeism, turnover, poor organizational citizenship,
and adverse effect on employees’ mental and physical health].
2. Incentive Pay:
- Incentive pay plans are meant to increase output, which can be
measured quantitatively.
- For incentive plan targets, the employees must have confidence
that they can achieve the targets.
3. Gain Sharing:
- It is a reward system in which team members earn bonus for
increasing productivity or reduce wastages.
- To illustrate, if the wastage is reduced from 5% to less the
benefits may be shared equally with the team.
4. Profit Sharing:
- It means sharing of profits with the employees by way of
distribution of bonus.
- Profit sharing plan has its shortcomings – one, that it has
become a regular feature in government departments irrespective of
performance and two, it may have no relation with individual
efforts.
5. Stock Options:
- Many companies use employee stock options plans to compensate,
retain, and attract employees.
- These plans are contracts between a company and its employees
that give employees the right to buy a specific number of the
company’s shares at a fixed price within a certain period of
time.
6. Retirement Benefits:
- It includes the accumulated provident fund, gratuity, leave
encashment and pension. The provision of terminal benefits provides
assurance to employees during the service for their future.
2.Non-Financial
tools used to motivate staff
Non-financial incentives do not involve money payments. These
are also important in motivating employees as they bring in
psychological and emotional satisfaction to them.
These include so many techniques. People do work for money-but
they work even more for meaning in their lives. In fact, they work
to have fun.
Some of the important non-financial incentives
include:
1. Job security:
- Nothing can motivate a worker, appointed temporarily, better
than provision of job security.
- Even if a temporary worker puts in greater efforts, lack of job
security will always pose a threat.
- If such a worker is given job security, he will be more
committed to the organization.
2. Challenging work:
- Workers, who are dynamic in nature, do not show preference for
routine jobs.
- They are always ready to accept challenging assignments,
challenge can be brought through mentoring, job redesigning – job
enlargement and job enrichment.
- Understand the capabilities of every individual in the
organization and accordingly assign him work.
3. Recognition:
- It is important that the employer recognizes hard work.
- Even a word of appreciation from him would motivate the
employees to maintain the same level of performance or do even
better.
- Employees ranked a personal ‘thank you’ as the most sought
after form of recognition, followed by a handwritten note of
appreciation from the boss.
4. Better job Title:
- Job titles do matter. Employees do show preference for certain
designations.
- A salesman, for example, would like to be designated as a sales
executive and a sweeper to be Sanitary Inspector.
5. Opportunities for Advancement:
- There should never be a stagnation point for any employee
during the prime time of his career.
- The employer must always provide opportunities for his
employees to perform well and move up in the hierarchy.
6. Empowerment:
- To stimulate an employee is his involvement in certain crucial
decisions. For example, if the management decides to buy a new
machinery for the factory, the workers’ viewpoints may be secured
before making the final decision. The management should avoid
unilateral decisions on such matters.
7. Competition:
- The management can encourage healthy competition among the
employees.
- This would, certainly, motivate them to prove their
capabilities.
- The management can also rank the employees according to
performance.
- Such of those employees who have performed very well may be
given merit certificates.
8. Job Rotation:
- By job rotation we mean that the employees will be exposed to
different kinds of job.
- This certainly would break the monotony of employees.
9. Lead by Example — be passionate and
energetic:
- Leaders should demonstrate the attitudes, values, actions, and
mindsets that they want among their staff.
- Leaders are always considered as role models.
10. Encourage the use of humour and
creativity:
- Incorporating humour into the workplace can alleviate stress
and create a more positive environment for everyone.
- Strategies to enhance humour include having a daily cartoon or
joke sent to all staff via e-mail, encouraging laughter, finding
fun in events that did not turn out as planned or expected
etc.
11. Treat your people as human beings – neither
inferior, nor superior:
- Show trust and respect
- motivate them for creativity
- create a ‘safe-to-risk environment’
- keep them informed of relevant developments inside the
organisation
- mistakes be treated as learning tools instead of blaming
them
- act as an advocate for their employees and be a visible
champion for them
- provide resources and support required by staff to complete
their jobs
- promote and provide two-way feedback
- address stress and burnout
- implement work/life balance initiatives.
3. Which tools are best used to help motivate
staff?
i) Learning incentives
Employees who invest in themselves and their education over time
not only have a renewed sense of perspective and focus on their
projects, but they can actively increase your bottom line.
ii) Perks: PTO, childcare and services
Employee benefits and perks are part of almost all compensation
packages. It has become standard (and often mandated) for companies
to offer benefits like health insurance, paid time off and
flexibility. However, employees are looking for their benefits to
be taken to the next level.
iii) Appreciation, feedback, improvement
More than anything, the biggest motivating factor for employees
are words of affirmation. Showing recognition of work,
encouragement and giving employees opportunities to improve will
often reap the biggest productivity benefits.
iv) Employee motivation tools
- TINYpulse: Software that allows leaders to pinpoint workplace
problems. TinyPulse’s tools feature real-time feedback for
recognition, as well as technology for weekly check-ins, feedback
and goal-setting.
- Kudos: Kudos is an employee recognition system and corporate
social network that engages employees to create a strong connection
to corporate culture. It provides opportunities for
employee-to-employee feedback, manager-to-employee feedback and
customizable badges and certificates.
- Culture Amp: Culture Amp provides surveys and insight for
engaged employees. Their surveys can be customized to suit your
organization and they offer an intuitive dashboard and analytics
engine.
- HighGround: HighGround offers an HR cloud platform designed for
employees to help companies build highly engaged and
high-performing cultures through continuous feedback, ongoing
employee development and real-time recognition.