Employee motivation – ‘The devil is in the detail’

Time is the most precious thing we have and our job takes large amounts of it. Ideally, a job is not only a source of income, but it is much about personal fulfillment, which is fundamental to the quality of our lives.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

It seems difficult to invest extra time and discretionary effort in a career we don’t like. How can we be truly great at what we do if we lack passion in our job? Passionate and motivated employees will always have self-drive, and they work relentlessly toward their goals, trying to seek out extra training, achieving new certifications and widening their horizons.

What are the benefits of motivated employees? And what can employers do to encourage motivation?

Motivation plays a key role in keeping the best employees. Inspired employees not only are more likely to take an active interest in learning all aspects of the business, but they may become an inspiration to those around them. Consequently, it goes without saying that employee motivation influences to a significant degree the organizational performance and effectiveness. Understanding its significance should be of great interest to organizations in order to boost productivity, enhance the creative excellence and organizational innovation and last but not least, avoid high employee turnover rate which is counterproductive.

Motivation is definitely the most powerful emotion employees bring to work every single day. A great leader is the most powerful factor in improving employee satisfaction through understating the essential nature of human motivation. The number one consideration, as cliche as it sounds, embraces all truth: “Make your people your No. 1 priority, and the rest will follow.” The human factor has an undoubted importance in business success. The biggest mistake employers usually make is losing sight of the fact that the future is a human future. Successful people management involves evaluating and understating human interactions and behavior in relation to other elements of a workplace system. People-centric leadership develops high level of trust within an organization, which is earned through universal values, such as honesty, transparency and respect.

“You don’t build a business, you build people, and then people build the business.”

One of the most impressive of all leadership techniques for motivating employees and building a high-performance company culture is taking care of employees’ needs. Employees’ needs are individual and might be very diverse. Each and every one of us is driven by individual goals. Asking the team members about their personal goals is a clever way for employers to create a win-win situation, where employer gets the chance to understand how that particular team member could best contribute to the success of the business with his ambitions and skill set, at the same time the employee feels appreciated.

Appreciation is a fundamental human need. Individuals need to know they are valued, and it all starts with a successful internal communication strategy. Transparent and frequent dialogue, just like an honest and constructive feedback is a powerful practice to show appreciation for the dedication and contribution of each team member.
Certainly there are many other ideas employers can use to provide regular employee recognition. Potential for growth is one of them. Be it career growth, professional, financial or personal growth, employees always seem to perform at their best in an environment with abundant opportunities to grow.
Incentives can be very effective tools to improve employee morale, like extra paid time off, monetary bonuses, non-cash prizes. Educational and training incentives are prime ways to reward team members, as they create long-term benefits for both the employee and the company.

At Sport Advice – aiming at becoming an employer of choice- we place a strong emphasis on employees. We continuously demonstrate trust by flourishing a young and dynamic work environment where new ideas, experimentation and creativity are encouraged and failure isn’t final. Each team member has a valuable contribution to the overall business performance. We want employees to feel the importance of their individual role in the company’s future; therefore we strive to provide a clear understanding of the corporate missions and key initiatives. At the same time we encourage and help employees to set and achieve their individual goals and align them with the overall goals of the organization.

We are particularly committed to supporting team members with strong ambition to acquire specific knowledge or skills and improve their performance in their current roles. We recognize that employees not only assume responsibility for their work and actions, but they have to share in the benefits and rewards. Therefore we designed a well-functioning performance-based employee reward program and we continuously review and improve on our employee recognition practices. After all, our greatest satisfaction is having happy and engaged employees on board, and this remains our no. 1 priority.