What Really Motivates Your Employees?
I think that we all realize that incentives, recognition and praise are all motivators of our employees, but did you know that when your employees see they’re making headway on their job, goals or projects their drive to the finish line is at it peak. This is the finding of a recent survey conducted by Teresa M. Amabile, a professor at the Harvard business School.
What Amabile discovered, along with her researcher Steven J. Kramer, is that the top motivating factor for employees is really PROGRESS. On days when her study group sensed they’re making progress in their jobs, goals, projects or when they received support or help to overcome obstacles, their emotions were most positive and their drive to succeed was at it peak. On days when they felt they were spinning there wheels or encountering roadblocks their moods and motivation were at the lowest.
Amabile says this finding should be very good news for managers, since she has found that the key to motivating your employees is well within your control. It all comes down to providing your employees with meaningful goals, resources, problem solving and encouragement and protecting them from irrelevant demands from yourself and others.
And by all means Amabile says, “Scrupulously avoid impeding (your employees) progress by changing goals autocratically, being indecisive, or holding up resources. Negative events generally have a greater effect on people’s emotions, perceptions, and motivation than positive ones, and nothing is more demotivating than a setback – the most prominent type of event on knowledge workers’ worst days.”
Based on this study’s in-depth research you can best keep your employees at peak performance by clarifying your goals, removing obstacles in their way, supporting their efforts with the right resources, refraining from imposing time pressures and resisting making every small glitch seem like a crisis.
As a final point, this study also found that recognition (over money) is indeed a strong motivational factor and lifts your employee’s moods, but it can’t happen everyday. “You can, however, see that PROGRESS happens every day”, says Amable.
Filed Under: Best Practices • savingsblog
