But money isn’t everything-Motivating staff without money

In contrast to the popular perception, the abillity to motivate staff is not the central role of a manger, it is about creating an environment where employees motivate themselves. It is possible to achieve this without relying on merit increases, bonuses and other monetary incentives.

Monetary incentives will always remain a powerful tool to motivate employees, especially in the short term. However, employees care strongly about several other aspects of their job, all of which can be leveraged to help motivate and retain staff. Managers can focus on the top non-monetary motivating factors: recognition, career development plans, the ability to make a difference at work and open communication.

By putting someone in a postion of leadership, with the autonomy to make decisions, you are demonstrating confidence and trust in that person. One way to achieve this is to introduce a system whereby each of your employees runs a weekly staff meeting, its structure, delineation of responsibilities to others and follow-up. Placing future leaders into management development roles is one of the most important benefits that you have to offer your people. In addition, the leadership roles give employees a chance to see the challenges faced by their superiors, and will make them more understanding. People who are responsible for attempting to fix problems are less likely to blindly blame others because they are more sensitive to the challenges involved in finding a solution.

In addition, keep an eye out for other ways to give your employees more responsibility to test their leadership skills. Research and surveys consistently conclude that respect and recognition are two crucial aspects in maintaining high morale, and they are proven ways to retain employees—and the expenditure is zero.

A crucial step in helping someone become motivated is to discover what internal factors motivate him or her. There a number of different strategies you can use to discover what motivates people, several of which will be explored in this article. People want to learn, contribute and make a difference at work. They are better placed to do this if they feel a direct connection with a company, and recognise their careers are moving forward. Have your employees become consciously aware of how they are affecting the business, and intermittently analyse their performance. You can compare perceptions and some important differences may emerge that need addressing. You can structure a written self-evaluation form in three parts being Past, Present & Future.

• What have you done over the past year to increase revenues, decrease expenses or improve efficiency?
• How has your work here made our company a better place?
• How would you grade yourself on timeliness, reliability, customer satisfaction & responsibility?
• Present:
• What do you need from me, as your supervisor, to provide you with more structure, direction and feedback to help you develop the skills that you feel are critical to your success and the success of the organisation?
• Future:
• What are your performance goals over the next year, and what will be the measurable outcomes so that you can demonstrate that you’ve reached those goals?
• What do you see as the next logical move in career progression at our firm, and how long would you expect it to take to get there?

Until you know what’s important to your people, it is not possible to truly manage effectively. Face-to-face evaluations require the manager to be a good listener and observe carefully while maintaining an attitude of acceptance and openness that encourages staff members to reveal their inner motivations. Talk-time should be roughly 80:20 in favour of the employee. There are many different types of assessments, exercises and lines of questioning that the manager can use, but the key to success is the non-judgmental and positive attitude that allows people to feel comfortable and proud about who they are and what they want.

Making use of personality assessments that identify preferences, traits or strengths, can provide further insights into your staff. After all, a person’s natural tendencies indicate what motivates them. Using the data from the assessment, have a discussion with the employee to understand more completely how they feel about their strengths, how they use them and why they enjoy these strengths.

Ask them to tell you about a time when they were really happy at work. Draw them out to uncover what exactly was motivating them at the time, and listen closely to what was important to them. Accept what they say, withholding your judgment. Notice their body language, and observe how they behave when they have complete choice. What do they do in their spare time? What kind of tasks do they volunteer for?

You can utilise the information gained from these exercises to leverage your staff’s strengths and discuss how to accommodate or change their weaknesses. Apart from the insights of the assessments, your willingness to be open and respectful, that is, to be a coach, with employees contributes to a positive working atmosphere.

It is probably safe to assume that many of your best employees are resume-builders. They will stay long enough to prove their worth so long as they are on the fast track. Once they feel blocked from upward mobility, however, they may start to look for other opportunities elsewhere. Thus, it is crucial to allow all your employees a chance to reach their career goals within your organisation. The crucial aspect here is that people are much more inclined to feel like they’re making a positive contribution to the organisation if they’re in a learning curve. Thus, even if you can’t promote them because of hiring freezes, you could indeed provide opportunities for personal development.

Training organisations offer one-and two-day offsite workshops as well as onsite seminars on everything from business writing to team building to supervision for first-time supervisors. The cost is minimal and, because prices are so low, the real issue becomes the opportunity cost of having your employees out of the office for a day.

Many other training organisations offer hundreds of situation-specific seminars via e-learning, self-study courses, like finance for non-financial managers, foreign language acquisition and software certification. Two or three seminars per employee per year may add very little to your overhead budget and allow employees a one-day “sabbatical” to reflect on their careers as well as to reinvent themselves in light of your company’s changing needs.

More companies adhere to the philosophy of minimal communication rather than open-book management. In other words, senior management often assumes that the less employees know, the better. Even if your senior management adheres to this closed communication style, practise open book management with your own staff.

Whenever possible, research your organisation on an Internet search engine such as Google. Or send a member of your team to the library to find information in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, Who’s Who in Finance and Industry or Ward’s Business Directory.

In essence, you will have a chance to research your firm as well as your competitors, and little does more to stimulate interest and competition than pointing employees to the right tools to educate themselves, and the rest of your staff. Knowledge is power, and the Internet and library make for free resources of invaluable information.

What is more powerful than knowledge though, is the ability to apply that knowledge.