If you’re a founder who has built a business you can be proud of, it makes for quite an interesting exercise looking back on how it all started out and what it has evolved into. There are so many different new aspects you learn to have to deal with as your start-up perhaps grows into a company that employs lots of people, employees being one of those dynamics.
You can set up the most fluid, dynamic and effective of structures, but the different employees filling different positions comes with the fact that there are so many different personalities to have to deal with and there are bound to be some glitches. The key to maintaining a progressively evolving workplace and keeping it on an ideal growth trajectory is to set up systems which churn on regardless of the differences that develop among employees. Whatever differences develop (and there will be differences) should be sorted out as swiftly as possible without affecting the aggregated productivity of business and this comes down to putting into place efficient systems to deal with those differences, best achieved through an effective rewards mechanisms to keep the motivation going amongst the employees.
What Motivates Employees
Most business owners, managers, executive directors, CEOs and anybody else in an authoritative position get it wrong in terms of what they believe to be the most effective motivational factors for employees. Believe it or not, it’s not all about the money. A study was actually done in which it was found that money isn’t the ultimate motivator for employees. It’s not all about the pay rise.
In the same way that players are motivated to play more in an online casino thanks to bonus rewards, employees are motivated to do more and do better as a result of feeling like their contributions are valued. That’s all really. Of course some monetary incentives will never hurt in reinforcing your show of appreciation for their valued inputs, but the point is that a happy employee who feels as if the work they’re contributing is of value makes for an employee who’ll just make sure to do a better job, always.
Some of the most miserable employees are in fact the highest paid ones and there’s nothing worse for the growth and development of a company than an uninspired, unmotivated employee. That distinct lack of motivation and lack of inspiration will have them doing only the minimum amount of required work just to get their next pay cheque, sometimes even going as far as trying to get away with doing less than what’s required of them.
So every so often, invite your employees along to whatever setting will demonstrate to them the impact of their contribution to the final product and in so doing show them that their contributions are indeed valued.
Obviously there are some jobs which none of us can deny are nothing more than dead-end jobs, so you can’t really use the same motivational rewards system for your top-level management team as you would for the cleaning staff, for instance.
