Jason Miller helps influential brands and celebrities create generational wealth with their businesses | CEO, Strategic Advisor Board.
While I now understand that there are various ways to empower employees, when I first started my career, I thought money was the only way (or at least the best way). But after years of giving raises and buying my employees’ appreciation, I’ve found that motivation is highly individualized.
I know it might sound crazy to some people that money isn’t everyone’s main goal when it comes to work, but different personalities value different things in work and life. There are a lot of ways to motivate your employees and I want to look at some through two categories of motivation: Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is all about personal gratification and doing something that comes from internal rewards. You’re doing it for yourself and your own goals. Extrinsic motivation is about external rewards. I believe you need both to create a positive work environment for your employees.
Intrinsic Motivators
Autonomy
I’ve found that giving employees the freedom to make their own decisions leads to higher job satisfaction and can even be used as a competitive advantage when you’re recruiting new employees. If you need further convincing raises aren’t always the best incentive, research shows almost half of employees would give up a raise of 20% in order to have more control over how they work.
This isn’t always possible, but if you can, try to allow your employees to set their own pace on projects and create their own deadlines. You’d be surprised at how many of them keep to their deadlines. They just need to be given the go-ahead and empowerment from you.
Flexibility
This is a great one for those who value work-life balance like I do. Maybe they want to work from home or have the option for hybrid work/office options, or maybe they want to choose their schedules and work hours. Flexibility can go as far as allowing your employees to choose the projects they’re most passionate about to work on and even who to work on them with.
Mentorship
Don’t underestimate the value of giving guidance and mentorship to your employees. For some employees, climbing the corporate ladder and achieving specific job titles is what keeps them motivated. That’s why I encourage you to make sure to know which employees have specific career trajectories planned out. Make it a point to sit with them one on one and help them advance toward their goals. Having access to the boss can be a powerful tool on its own, and it may not be common to have that one-on-one time in larger corporations.
Extrinsic Motivators
Recognition/Awards
In order for recognition and awards to be meaningful, they need to be authentic and personalized. Acknowledge your employees in front of the other staff members so they can be congratulated more than once. This may also encourage other employees to work toward similar awards.
But recognition doesn’t always have to be for metrics reached. You can also use it to reward certain behaviors as well. For example, if your employee is working more hours lately or if they’ve been helpful with projects outside of their scope, publicly recognizing their behavior can make them feel positive and more satisfied. Based on a Hubspot survey, 69% of employees stated they’d work harder if they were recognized for their work.
Think about adding peer awards too; sometimes these can mean more to employees than top-down awards coming in from management. Having your peer’s respect is more about the sense of belonging. Recognition from your peers can increase employee morale and job satisfaction.
Lastly, offering unconventional awards such as tickets to a sporting event or concert, or a gift card to a restaurant of their choice, can be a fun way to incentivize employees. I love to give away outside-the-box incentives to the people who work just as hard or even harder than me. It shows how vested we are in each other’s success.
Time Off
Give your employees more time off for doing a good job and see how motivated they get. Personally, this is the number one thing that motivates me as a CEO. If they’re working with a team, it’s also wonderful to see how the whole team can come together and improve work culture and morale with this kind of incentive.
As an example, you can give an extra day of holiday to those who have performed well and hit their goals. But even if you simply give an afternoon off to show your appreciation, this can help employees come back feeling more valued and satisfied.
And remember this time time-off reward doesn’t always need to be about hitting specific metrics. A company that solely focuses on incentivizing sales metrics and other monetary goals is setting up a work culture surrounding appreciation of only hitting those goals.
If you want to have great employee retention while creating a motivating and positive work culture, I think you need to have a mix of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Keep in mind that giving away too many extrinsic awards can eventually cause employees to become bored, so there needs to be a balance. That’s why your motivations need to be more than just about money.
Consider giving your employees the intrinsic motivators like autonomy, flexibility and mentorship they crave along with extrinsic motivators such as recognition, awards and time off that can help lead to a better work-life balance.
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