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What Motivates Your Team?

Just about everyone wants to do interesting work, earn a decent salary and feel they’ve contributed to something bigger than themselves. But truly motivating your employees takes more than a regular paycheck and the PrideStaff Modesto | What Motivates Your Workforce?occasional pat on the back. What’s required is a well-defined strategy that tailors compensation, rewards and motivational drivers to each individual’s needs.

It’s a natural extension of customer relationship marketing (CRM), whereby you take the same concepts and model them internally with your team. After all, you wouldn’t have your external customers without the commitment of your internal ones. And your employees are hard pressed to treat customers uniquely if they don’t feel that’s how they’re treated by you.

  • Employee motivation is as individual as the people who work for you. One person may be driven by money, another by personal recognition and still another by owning equity in your business. But you can boil it down to finding out what your employees want and how to give it to them or enable them to earn it.

Manage – and Motivate – One on One
No two employees are alike. Your charge is to determine what makes each one tick as an individual. Collect this information on an ongoing basis and translate it into offerings that effectively motivate that particular person.

  • There’s no single recipe for motivation. The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) recently looked at 160 corporate benefits ranging from ice cream socials to prepaid funerals. Employers who practice one-on-one employee relations management devise creative perks that correspond precisely to individual needs. For some, this means flexible hours and telecommuting. For others, it’s funding for professional conferences, tuition reimbursement, or vegan and kosher meals in the company cafeteria.
  • Understand employees’ personal lives. Are they balancing work with raising children or caring for elderly parents? Is there a crisis at home, such as a newly-diagnosed illness? Without prying, be aware of these issues and stand ready to help. Perhaps you can provide free housecleaning, hot meals or a day away with a loved one.
  • Employee CRM is cost effective. This target marketing provides the right products and services to people to meet their specific needs. You eliminate the inefficiency that comes with providing blanket benefits or rewards to employees who may not want or need them.

Go Ahead and Ask
How do you identify individual desires and motivators? To create a CRM-focused organization where employee needs are known and served, devise a procedure for obtaining feedback on a regular basis. Some companies do this as part of every new hire orientation, asking attendees in what form they prefer their benefits and perks. This is then updated as part of regular performance reviews.

  • Get to know people. If your organization is too large to do it one employee at a time, schedule small-group breakfasts or lunches, limiting attendance to no more than half a dozen individuals. There’s no formal agenda, though you can take a few minutes to update them on current company developments. Just chat about whatever’s on their minds. Ask if the organization is meeting their needs and if not, why not.

For additional ideas on developing and motivating your team, read our related posts or contact PrideStaff Modesto today.

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