A note from Andrea..Recently I had a great session with Mark Terrell, looking at my Motivations. I asked him to write a guest blog for us….enjoy…
Richard Branson knows a thing or two about getting the best from his people, his philosophy is “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
So focusing on why your people come to work, over and above being paid a decent wage, is a great business philosophy which will set you apart. The competition for talent is just as fierce, if not more so, than the competition for customers so focus needs to be on becoming an employer of choice.
When we feel good about our work we are bound to be more productive because we will most likely have more energy and less inclined to take time off sick. The benefit for the business is more productivity which should, if the business idea is sound, lead to more profit.
Treating everyone as individuals is essential if you really want to everyone to feel they are being looked after, it’s no good finding that most people like to work from home and then only focusing on that option. Giving everyone freedom to choose what is right for them will send out the message that it’s not about us it’s about you.
The business case for focusing on what your people want from their work is further enhanced by reducing the likelihood of people leaving the business. Reducing the potential cost of recruiting, inducting and training a replacement for someone that has left to fulfil their motivations elsewhere.
Motivation has traditionally been associated with events designed to boost moral that may involve a motivational speaker or a team building exercise. A more effective way to treat motivation is to treat it more like an on going process of maintaining and improving motivation like you would fitness, you would run a marathon once and then sit back and declare you are now fit.
“By focusing on motivation you are effectively giving your employees a voice about what’s important to them and managers, if their motivations are being met, are more likely to engage”.
In 2009, David Macleod and Nita Clarke co authored the publication, Engaging for success which identified employee voice and engaging managers as being essential for business success.
So it’s clear that motivation is important but how do we identify what’s really motivating our employees? Until quite recently that has been difficult along with describing motivators and measuring how well they are being met.
Motivational Maps is an on line diagnostic that identifies and measure motivation using a language to describe nine motivators for work. Each motivator is given a value/strength so we can see which are the most important motivators for an individual, the team and the organisation.
When we know what’s most important we can use that information to decide on the most appropriate reward strategy. Reward strategies can vary from offering things like private health care to satisfy a strong motivation around security to good quality feedback for those motivated to make a difference.
This is a guest blog written by Mark Terrell, author “Motivated, the reluctant leaders guide to building a business that sets you free, creator of the Reluctant Leader Academy and Motivated Business Club
