by Carol TiceA while back, I wrote for a publication where the editors had a great sense of how to get buy-in on their ideas from the staff. For instance, when they wanted to roll back our deadline half a day, they held a company retreat and fed us little Jolly Rancher candies and free pastries while they gave us several reasons why this change would be good for us, the writers, not just the editors.
Then the leadership at this paper changed. In came a new editor. One day, at the end of a weekly staff meeting, he piped up at the end with, "Oh, by the way -- deadline is now Tuesday at 4 pm, not Wednesday 10 am." No reason given. No discussion. No candies. And off he went to his office.
I bet you can guess which of these two initiatives was more successful.
Motivating employees and getting them excited about your plans is one of the biggest challenges in human resources. So often, edicts just come from on high...and immediately are ignored, ridiculed, or even actively undermined by the staff. When employees feel disrespected by their lack of inclusion in the decisionmaking process and aren't given reasons why the change is happening, they often don't care.
Change is hard. Workers need help and good reasons to make a change, or it's very possible that it just won't happen.
Giving employees an active role in decisions that affect them is helpful, but not always possible. Sometimes, a change has to happen, and that's the way it is. The office has to be moved to cut costs. Hours have to be cut, or layoffs mean remaining workers need to do more. The company really needs to sell 1 million widgets this month instead of 750,000.
How can you motivate employees to do what needs to be done? A strong employee rewards program can help. Here are 10 tips for creating a great motivational program:
- Explain the goals. Workers need a very clear sense of what they need to do to be rewarded.
- Define who's eligible. Every employee in a department should be able to participate.
- Have regular checkups. Without a plan to check progress on a regular basis, the goal tends to fall off of employees' to-do lists. They also think you didn't really care about it, since they're not hearing about it anymore.
- Reward right away. The reward should come as soon as possible after the goal is achieved.
- Reward consistently. It's very important that everyone who meets the goal gets the reward. Watch out for managers who want to pick and choose who gets a reward, as you can end up worse off than if you never offered rewards.
- Reward on the cheap. You don't need a big budget to run a rewards program. Consider rewarding high-achieving workers with flextime for a month, a paid day off, praise in a company meeting, a handwritten thank-you note, an outing for the team, or a small party. It's amazing what a gallon of ice cream or a round of lattes can do for morale.
- Let workers pick rewards. Many companies work with incentive-rewards catalogs, where workers qualify to order gifts of their choosing if they achieve certain benchmarks. These can be very effective -- I know I still have and use some of the catalog items I "won" for various corporate achievements.
- Reward effort. While workers are striving toward a goal, you can help keep them on track by catching them doing good. Have a spontaneous lunch out, let a worker leave an hour early, hand out a free-latte card or other small gift. Let employees know you're watching and noticing their progress.
- Reward publicly. Quietly handing an employee a gift card is nice, but handing it out at an all-company meeting magnifies the effect of the reward.
- Surprise workers with a reward. Sometimes, recognizing workers outside of a goal program can reap great rewards. Personally, I'm still using the iPod shuffle I got randomly from one client after working long hours on their Web-site relaunch. These small gifts can sow many months of goodwill.
Have another great idea for keeping workers motivated? Leave a comment and let us know.
Photo via Flickr user USACE Europe District
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