I believe that 99.9% of the corporate world can connect when I say that at one or multiple points of your working lives, you feel terribly unmotivated. You don't feel like getting up in the morning to take the early morning commute to work. You don't want to have to sit all day in a crummy office crunching numbers or letters or whatever work you have to do for some boss who could hardly care less about your well-being. For the CEO's and different departmental leaders out there, I know that this creates a very toxic environment for work. Sadly though, it is already a given fact that most employees feel this way. Thus, managers are left to figure out creative means to motivate their employees to perform better.

They buy and read up on several leadership and strategy books as well brush up on some human resources management manuals, using resources which the regular Mr. Joe - Manager, would rather keep in savings than shell out as expenses. If you have the money, then fine. I strongly urge you to purchase these books. However, for the majority, I strongly suggest using online resources to learn more about these techniques for employee motivation. Squeeze the juice out of the internet to find the answers to your management questions. There are tons of sites and resources right at your fingertips.

For me there are just three basic tips one can follow to immediately cause change at work: DRB. Diagnose the problem. Reward Excellence. And Build Relationships. I can wholeheartedly guarantee that these three will go a long way in increasing your employees' performance level in both the short and long run.

To begin, one pretty solid way of improving the aforementioned toxic state of the work area is by first diagnosing the problem. What exactly causes them to feel this way? Is it because you as a manager pressure them too much? Is it because there are unrealistically high demands and deadlines to be met? These and more questions can be tackled by a good survey and can serve as an extremely valuable tool for managers to find aspects that need change. 

Moving on, rewarding your employees for meeting or going beyond their goals is an indispensable way of motivating them to progressively perform better. Now this can be in the form of raises in salary, but for cash-strapped companies these can come in simple improvised mini-award ceremonies, or through small "good job" or "thank you" notes, or through a simple lunch out for the exemplary employee (or crew for successful teams).

Lastly, the most important aspect of motivating employees for better performance is the need to build relationships. If your employees see you as someone in an ivory tower, whose likes and dislikes are divorced from their own likes and dislikes, then this can cause trouble for you. It's mean that you are not CONNECTING with them. Managers must always strive to CONNECT with their employees. They will always tend to work better if they have a manager whom they can simply talk to, and not some guy who couldn't care any less for who they are, and what they do.

Before we end, I hope these tips somewhat helped you in discovering ways to better motivate your employees and increase performance. Like I said, don't hesitate to go online to search up on more of these tips. There are millions of them, I tell you. Just be creative in finding them. Some of them are just a click or a search away.

Cheers to Employee Motivation!