Page 28 - How to Motivate Every Employee

tion of their employees. Let’s face it: you can’t always change or con-
trol certain factors that affect your employees’ enthusiasm for their
jobs. Some things, such as working conditions, specific assignments,
salaries, and benefits you can provide, but other factors can simply
be out of your control. Still, as the manager, you have a direct impact
on linking employee motivation to performance. Learn some of the
effective techniques that are working for other managers and then
try them when they seem appropriate for your employees. Be willing
to commit to a strategy so that employees don’t feel your approach
is simply a “flavor-of-the-week” series of gimmicks. You’ll be pleasant-
ly surprised to find that you can influence your employees’ motiva-
tion and improve their productivity and attitudes when you try
appropriate, innovative techniques and use them with your own per-
sonal style of leadership, business sense, and people skills.
Make sure employees know what performance is: Never assume that
your employees will automatically know what you mean by “perform-
ance.” It’s your responsibility to clearly define performance stan-
dards for them. You need to think of performance in your own terms
and then clearly and precisely explain what that means to your
employees. Only then will you be capable of linking performance to
motivation successfully.
Tell people what’s expected of them and be specific: Here are the
questions every manager must be able to answer for every employee:
“What’s expected of me?” “What is my role as a part of the group and
the organization?” “What’s considered unacceptable performance?”
“What must I do to reach your standards of performance?” Be explic-
it! The more detailed and explicit the expectations, the greater the
chance the employee will meet or exceed them.

“No person who is enthusiastic about his work has any-
thing to fear from life.”
—Samuel Goldwyn

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