A Good Motivation Programs for Employees

To survive and flourish, any business needs to increase net revenue and sustain growth; to do this, businesses must have a workforce that performs well and achieves or even exceeds targets.

And the only kind of workforce that can do that is a motivated workforce. So clearly, an effective motivation program must be in place if any company is to achieve its goals. According to the study “Incentives, Motivation and Workplace Performance: Research & Best Practices” by Harold D. Stolovitch, Richard E. Clark, and Steven J. Condly, incentive programs, “if selected, implemented, and monitored correctly,” improve individual performance by as much as 22 percent and team performance by as much as 44 percent.

A coherent and comprehensive motivation program can, according to the white paper “Motivation and Incentive Strategy: The Key to Making Your Workplace Exceptional,” lead to higher employee engagement. That’s because a well motivated workforce becomes more emotionally engaged as work towards reaching their goals. This, in turn, makes them more likely to stay put; because they feel a sense of achievement and they look forward to reaching their targets and earning their rewards. With the majority, if not all, of the employees highly motivated, enhanced levels of organizational performance will certainly follow. This can, in turn, lead to an increase in profitability and shareholder return. And of course, another result of an effective motivation system is reaping the benefits of positive returns that make any workplace exceptional.

A good motivation program should be well thought out, executed and communicated effectively across the entire organization. The main message should be that it’s an objective, transparent and consistent motivation system.

Included in the motivation program are reward and recognition programs such as Peer Recognition, Spot Recognition, Years of Service, Employee Referrals, Instant Recognition, Safety Recognition, Employee of the Week/Month/Year and Birthday/Special Occasion Awards.

Training is also a vital part of the motivation. Training when needed and other training programs should be customized and timed with the deadlines and goals of specific reward programs. The focus should be on educating and empowering employees to achieve goals.

There should also be an effective feedback system to set expectations, provide support, monitor improvements and the outcome of the training and meet goals.

A metrics manager or software to monitor performance can be a big help in implementing an effective training program and motivation scheme. Choose software that is easy to set up and lends itself to customization. Some metrics managers offer a wide variety of metrics-based rewards and online contests. Software like these can also help create campaigns and promotions within campaigns, set up a virtual rewards program for employees, give an update of the standings in more than one leaderboard, upload performance data of each participant, launch contests that are tied to specific metrics and allow viewing of real-time reports that include stats, points issuance, web tracking, points redemption, tax accrual and reporting. The software should be flexible enough to allow you to quickly change the performance program to what suits your needs, including a need for a competitive challenge.