The topic of how to boost employee motivation is one that has been covered exhaustively in many a blog post. However, what you may not realize is that it’s just as important to take steps to protect existing employee motivation.
When you go back to school online to earn your BS in Organizational Management, you’ll learn that many employees are already quite motivated. In fact, most employees are excited about their careers and come into their jobs brimming with the desire to do their best work. What these employees need most is to avoid being de-motivated by poor management practices, like the ones below.
Not Giving Your Employees a Sense of Purpose
Human beings need a reason to work. Having a sense of purpose gives people something to strive for, direct their energy toward and look forward to when they get up in the morning. Researchers even believe that people who have clear goals for their life live longer and are happier than people without a sense of purpose.
Employees need a sense of purpose at work in order to feel happy about their jobs. Take the time to let each one of your employees know their job is important. Show them how the role they fill helps further the company’s goals. This is important for all employees, but it’s especially important for those handling the more tedious or mundane aspects of running your organization. These employees can lose sight of the big picture easily. Don’t let them.
Not Building Relationships
If they don’t feel seen, heard and recognized at work, their motivation will seep away. Your employees have lives outside of work. Take the time to get to know each of your employees for the unique individuals they are. Ask about their weekends on Monday morning or about their weekend plans on Friday afternoon. Celebrate their birthdays. Ask after their families. Find ways to inject some fun into your corporate culture, so you and your employees can bond and have a good time together in the office.
Denying Employee Autonomy
Your employees are adults, and as adults, they juggle complicated lives. They pay bills, take care of kids, manage investments and maintain houses. If you fail to acknowledge their competency by giving them at least a small measure of autonomy at work, they will grow to resent it.
Give your employees some power to make their own decisions regarding their tasks and their role in general. If an employee wants to make some changes that aren’t going to affect anyone else, he or she should be able to do so without permission. By the same token, employees should be free to decide for themselves how they’re going to complete projects, as long as they meet their deadlines.
Shooting Down Your Employees’ Ideas
If you crush every idea your employees throw out, you’ll not only rob your employees of their motivation and kill their loyalty, you’ll also deprive the company of potentially brilliantly creative ideas. That’s not to say that your employees won’t have some truly awful ideas, too. But you need to at least consider each idea and offer appropriate feedback. It takes courage and initiative for an employee to present an idea at work — remember that when you’re considering your response.
Monopolizing Employee Interactions
Whether you’re having a meeting, hosting a mentoring session or giving a performance review, remember that your employees want to be spoken with, not at. When you’re interacting with an employee, don’t monopolize the conversation. Give your employee ample opportunity to respond to your remarks and reply to your questions. If your employee needs time to gather his or her thoughts before responding, give it. Monopolizing conversations denies your employees the opportunity to seek your guidance and learn from their mistakes, and it makes them feel unheard.
Protecting your employees’ sense of motivation is just as important as enhancing it. Be careful to treat your employees with respect. Acknowledge their individuality and give them the freedom to decide for themselves how to do their jobs, within reason. As long as you’re careful to avoid these common management mistakes, you’ll find that nurturing your employees’ motivation is much easier.
