Want to create highly motivated employees? Understand what drives them

It’s no secret that motivated workers equal loyal workers – people who are enthusiastic about their work and yield better results. That’s simple. The bigger question, is how do you motivate them? There are the obvious things, like pay increases, bonuses and flexible hours. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real key to a highly motivated workforce is understanding their needs and motivations, both at an individual and a team level, and meeting them.

So where to start? Everyone has their own set of needs and motivations, and in today’s multi-generational workforce, that’s even more the case. Too often, organizations fail to pay attention to the issues that are most important to people, such as communication, recognition, and having a sense of belonging or purpose. To achieve these, here are a few tactics to introduce if you haven’t got them in your organization already.

Provide a collective vision
People with purpose in the workplace are more bought in and engaged than those who simply turn up to do a job. Having a company mission statement is all well and good, but it must be embraced within the organization’s culture and its people, for it to have an impact.

Employees want to know where the company comes from, and why it stands for what it does, so that they can embrace that message and embody that in their actions. It must be clear and evident through the actions of the company and its senior leaders, and the experiences for its employees. Many companies have values and a mission – but think about how is this used throughout the company.