5 tips for motivating employees for efficient work

Eventually every employer faces the issue of corporate motivation when it’s necessary to create some plan in order to make colleagues work harder and more efficient. As a variant, implementing various tricks, simple threats of penalties or even firing. But reality shows that the stick and the carrot policy is not always efficient. Even if so, then only sometimes. But what if the long-time result is required? What kind of “carrot” it’s better to give to employees for making results exceed the expectations? The founder of the international freelance marketplace for linguists 2Polyglot Andrew Prudko shares his ideas.

1) Competition in frames of a company

This is one of the most efficient ways making employees be interested in live and sincere work. I became sure in it when I had implemented competition between three departments: SEO (search engine optimization), SMM (social media management) and PR. The goal of a competition was to attract as much as possible visitors to the website 2Polyglot per one month. After results each participant from teams, which had lost, put some sum into the “bank”. This sum was the same for everyone, not big one, but anyway, for winners the prime of small bonus inspires a lot. During the competition, the quantity of visitors increased more than twice. As it was figured out, the most efficient method occurred to be sharing information via social networks under conditions of limited or even absent budget and short time periods.

2) Connection between paychecks and work results

Every employee will work harder if the salary depends on work results. If the option to earn more money than boss is available, than it’s not only about money, personal interests is present here and it warms striving for working more efficiently. It would be better to protect an employee and to implement some stable and permanent part of a salary in addition to bonuses. Implementing only fees for work results is not the best idea, for example like percentage from sales the same as sales managers have. This is like a foundation, which makes an employee sure in one’s possibilities and in case of company’s difficulties, it guarantees an employee will receive funds anyway. Therefore, it is obviously easier to climb up if there is a jumping-sheet underneath. It is important to understand that the amount of stable part of the salary does not have to be too high for satisfying undemanding workers and not too low for jumping-sheet not to have visible holes.

3) Creating friendly condition in a team

No matter how difficult is the work of the employee according to position, one way or another, kindly condition inside of a team leads to an increase of work possibility of each employee. You should not be afraid of being yourself among colleagues, especially out of work time. You are the boss and leader at work, but outside office, you are father, husband, friend and, perhaps, eternal romantic person with the gorgeous sense of humor. Organize leisure for your team and sometimes you may even turn it to the topic game. For example, one innovative metallurgic plant invited a DJ with sound-recording equipment. That disk jockey recorded work sounds of the industrial equipment and then created tracks of electronic music with them. There were organizes free concert where plant workers were invited on the weekend.

4) “Limited” freedom

You should not implement all available electronic methods of time management: so called track systems (operation system and equipment, which helps to calculate efficient working time of employees). Do not implement penalties for insignificant lateness without notification. An employee has to feel like a human being, but not a robot. Let an employee come to work with pleasure where camera lens stares at him or her and where permanent pressure of penalties for extra breathe and spying are absent. It is uncomfortable to be situated in such condition, not only to work. The main thing is not to give too much freedom to employees, otherwise, they may not even come to work. Though, the famous American entrepreneur Richard Branson decided to make an experiment and implemented total freedom for employees of his company “Virgin”: workers choose themselves when to come to work, when to leave and how long to work. Let’s see what will be next.

5) Regular awards for special employees

And at last, stimulate those employees who i.e. achieved the best results in this month and it does not have to be money as prime. It also can be official thank-you note with the chief’s speech with warm words. Every employee would definitely like to become that lucky who has managed to stay on the pedestal. But that’s not it. An originate way to motivate employees would be “awarding” those workers whose results turned out to be the lowest. But, of course, it has to be in a funny form. For example, implement an award of a “Golden anchor” the same as we have done it giving a tip that someone retards the work. But do not laugh at such employee, don’t offend him or her, but make a ceremony in a serious tone mixing it with kind (!) jokes. It will encourage a colleague to work better in order to avoid becoming a candidate for the same award.

Therefore, this is absolutely incorrect that basic and the most significant motivation for workers is money. There are many ways of motivating employees with minimal expenses and these ones above can help founders and top managers receive more successful results from employees who will be sincerely interested in making more efforts for work.