How to Get Employees to Care about Their Work

Note: A guest post by Anthony Garcia. More details about him after the post.

One of the biggest issues that managers look at regularly is for innovative ways to encourage their employees to remain motivated at work, thereby creating a higher level of productivity than just the minimum level of service or production.

It can be extremely frustrating to instead find out your company is just another statistic in the $544 billion lost annually due to employees working on tasks or activities other than company productivity.

However, this sort of scenario can be avoided, or at least reduced, by first identifying what drives your employees as people and then utilizing that information to build coordinated, empowered teams in your office. In this article, we’re going to see how to motivate / get your employees to care about their work.

Understanding is Key

Managing is just as much of an art as it is a science. Online graduate programs may teach formulas that work in textbooks, but there is no all-encompassing formula to what makes employees suddenly care about their work. Every workplace expert will tell an office manager to pay attention to morale and motivation, but then they are left to figure out the “how” and “why” on their own.

The first thing that helps understand what makes employees tick is accepting the fact that people don’t necessarily get “motivated” on command.

Every employee has his or her own personal priorities that they consider incentives or reasons to work harder. For some it’s pride. Others will budge for money, yet some employees love fame and social awards. A good manager’s job involves figuring what each employee values and using this knowledge to help get them to work together as a team.

With personal incentives identified, you can then weave work motivators to pull each team member into play, potentially producing a higher level of work from each. However, a manager has to be careful not to come across playing favorites or being unfair.

Where basic compensation is involved, managers have to choose what benefits each employee receives and whether the compensation adequately reflects the employee’s value. Bonuses and promotions should only be utilized where they are merit-based. That way, when someone is given a bonus for higher productivity, you have a defense to those that complain but don’t produce the same work level.

In some cases, no matter what is tried, some employees just won’t fit with the group or rise to the same level of productivity. Management has to think carefully about such cases because left unchecked, they have the potential to drag down the rest of the office.

If general incentives don’t seem to get a reaction, it may be better to rotate that given employee into an entirely new function. In some cases, just placing the person in a new job with a clean slate re-energizes the person to care again about the work he or she does.

Attitudes Matter

Much of what makes up morale in an office, which in turn can improve or reduce motivation, is employees’ attitudes towards work and each other.

It takes just one employee with a negative attitude to bring surrounding colleagues down. People become agitated, irritated, and distracted. This takes attention away from work and focuses it on unnecessary issues.

A manager’s prime job in motivation involves getting people back on tracking thinking about their responsibilities rather than what is bothering them. If that requires the manager actively correcting the attitude of the employee causing problems, then sometimes that approach is necessary. The group thrives and works better when everyone shares a positive attitude about their workplace and production.

Supervisors can be the Obstacle

Along with the employee’s attitude being in the right place, the manager needs to lead by example. Office supervisors can be over-imposing on their employees, which can lead to lower employee morale and an overall lower level of productivity among all employees.

Instead, many find ways to cause passive resistance as a form of revenge. The manager is even more responsible for leading the team by maintaining the positive attitude, especially when times get rough. He or she is the coach as well as the leader, so the employees will gauge their own commitment to work by the person leading them.

Empower Employees

It sounds like a corporate buzzword, but empowering employees has been shown to successfully push employees to achieve their best.

The easiest way to make empowerment occur is by letting employees own the successes or failures of their own projects. Guidance and reference can still be provided, and helping hand doesn’t hurt, but where employees feel they control the direction of a task, they begin to internalize both the rigors and the results of their own work. When employees feel ownership they become protective and invested in the activities they feel are “theirs.”

*Image(s) credits: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Conclusion:

Combine empowerment with attitude, the right incentive motivators, and a good leadership by example, and suddenly a manager has the tools needed to raise the performance levels of his or her team.

O.K! How do you get your employees to care about their work? Let’s discuss about it in the comments section below.

Author box:

Author name: Anthony Garcia

About: Anthony recently completed his graduate education in English Literature. A New Mexico native, he currently resides and writes in Seattle, Washington. He writes primarily about education, travel, literature, and American culture.

P.S. If you like to contribute an awesome guest post on arkarthick.com, please contact me HERE with the subject line : Guest Post (or) send me a DM on Twitter @arkarthick.

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Tags: bad boss, boss, Business, business tactics, employees attitude, empower employees, Entrepreneur, inspire employees, leadership, management, motivate employees, team leader, teamwork, understand employees

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