How to motivate employees?

According to the "two-factor theory" proposed by psychologist Herzberg, in order to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, first of all, we should play the role of health factors, so that employees do not have dissatisfaction and maintain their enthusiasm, but this is only a preventive maintenance factor, and health factors alone are far from enough. More importantly, we should make good use of incentive factors, fully stimulate the initiative of employees, enhance their sense of responsibility, sense of achievement and enterprising spirit, maximize their potential, and improve their work efficiency and creativity. If every employee has a strong motivation to create the best performance, then managers need not worry too much about strategy and goals.

The role of incentives is enormous. James, a professor at Harvard University in the United States, once pointed out in a research report that the employees who implement hourly wage can only play 20% - 30% of their abilities, while when fully motivated, they can play 80% - 90%.

1. First of all, the value of employees and their work should be affirmed. Everyone has certain abilities, but the forms of their abilities are different. It is an effective incentive for employees to pay attention to employees, discover their abilities, use them reasonably, and make them give full play to their talents.

2. It is necessary to establish reasonable objectives and performance measurement standards as accurate and clear as possible. The goal should neither be too high nor too low. Too high will lower employees' expectations and affect their enthusiasm, while too low will lower the incentive effect of the goal.

3. We should fully understand the needs of employees and motivate them as needed. Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, an American humanistic psychologist, points out that after the low-level needs are relatively satisfied, there will be higher-level needs, and only the unmet needs can affect behavior. That is to say, only when the incentive measures can meet the certain needs of the stimulated can they play an incentive role. Obviously, a single incentive form cannot meet everyone's appetite. For people at different levels of demand, different incentive methods should be used. Moreover, under the same economic cost, different incentive methods have different incentive levels for people. Therefore, managers must work hard with employees to find out their biggest incentive factors: material rewards, training, development opportunities, good working atmosphere, or other rewards. Many companies are trying to use the form of reward package, so that employees who should be rewarded have a certain choice space.

4. Incentives should be moderate. Excessive incentives will not only increase the cost of incentives, but also greatly increase the possibility of triggering immoral behaviors; Too weak incentives are difficult to achieve the desired effect, especially when the goal is set high.

5. Incentives should be timely.

6. In order to achieve good incentive effect, we should also pay attention to the level design of incentives. Some managers emphasize stars and heroes, and take strong incentives to them, while ignoring other employees with good performance. This practice often encourages personal heroism, and also causes or aggravates contradictions among employees, which is not conducive to team building. When you reward employees who have exceeded their goals for European travel, it is recommended that you also reward employees who have worked hard to achieve 100% of their goals for domestic travel.

7. Good incentives should be the organic combination of material incentives and spiritual incentives. Material incentive is the general mode of incentive, and is also the most widely used incentive mode at present. Salary increases, year-end dividends, various bonuses, equity and welfare awards are common ways of material rewards. Compared with material incentives, spiritual incentives mainly meet the spiritual needs of employees. In actual work, no matter what level the employee is at, and no matter what other needs are different, everyone has the need to be respected and recognized by others. Spiritual motivation is not only relatively low in cost, but also can often achieve the effect that material motivation is difficult to achieve. The combination of spiritual and material incentives can greatly stimulate employees' sense of achievement and pride, and increase the incentive effect.

8. The following are the incentive methods that are often used by many enterprises and have been proved to be effective, which may serve as a reference for you.

*Material incentives. Results sharing. Sharing results with employees reflects managers' affirmation and appreciation of employees' work and value creation. Bonus, dividend, equity, party, etc.

*Training opportunities. Giving training and improvement opportunities is not only an affirmation and reward for excellent employees, but also a valuable investment for the company.

*Challenging jobs, including job rotation and promotion. When explaining "what is the reward for work", Kakuchi Inayama, a famous Japanese entrepreneur, pointed out that "the reward for work is the work itself", which shows that the work itself is stimulating.

*Authorization incentives. Everyone wants to realize self-worth, and authorization reflects the manager's trust and ability of employees.

*Honor incentive. Honor reflects the full recognition and high evaluation of the team and individual contributions of the enterprise, and is an important incentive to meet the self-esteem needs of employees.

*Praise motivation is a form of honor motivation. Give more praise, even if it is a small contribution or progress of employees. Praise must be sincere and make employees feel valued, respected and proud. Praise costs almost nothing, but it is very effective.

*Goal motivation. Goal motivation is to set appropriate goals, induce people's motivation and behavior, and achieve the purpose of mobilizing enthusiasm.

*Participate in incentives. Generally speaking, employees are interested in participating in discussions related to their own interests and behaviors. Through participation, employees can develop their sense of mission, belonging and identity to the enterprise, and meet their needs of self-esteem and self-realization.

*Crisis incentives. At the end of the 1960s, Canon and Casio of Japan lost in the competition in the small calculator market. In addition to the first oil crisis, Canon had a huge deficit and was close to bankruptcy. How to remedy the decline? The Board of Directors finally decided to tell all employees about the crisis, let them know the real situation of the enterprise, arouse their sense of crisis, and cheer up the morale of fighting against each other. This sense of crisis will create wisdom and work efficiency that can not be generated at ordinary times. The employees have put forward many innovative new suggestions and plans, and the company has put forward the famous "excellent enterprise idea" on this basis. This idea has played a great role in reforming the production and scientific research system, and has greatly improved the enthusiasm of the employees, so that Canon can achieve great success and go global within six years.

Effective incentives require managers to grasp the timing and frequency of rewards. The timing and opportunity of rewards directly affect the effect of incentives, while too high or too low frequency of rewards will weaken the effect of incentives.

Incentives have costs. When designing incentive systems and methods, especially when using material incentives, enterprise managers should fully consider the cost and effect of incentives, and try to achieve the best incentive effect with the least investment.