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    Best Practices: Motivating Employees: Bringing Out the Best in Your People
    Best Practices: Motivating Employees: Bringing Out the Best in Your People
    Best Practices: Motivating Employees: Bringing Out the Best in Your People
    Ebook154 pages1 hour

    Best Practices: Motivating Employees: Bringing Out the Best in Your People

    By Barry Silverstein

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    About this ebook

    In today's high-pressure workplace, motivating all employees to consistently contribute their best can mean the difference between success and failure. Motivating Employees, a comprehensive and essential resource for any manager on the run, shows you how.

    Learn to:

    • Inspire employees to succeed
    • Improve performance through coaching
    • Minimize the impact of common de-motivators
    • Create a fair and consistent reward system
    • Turn negative experiences into positive, motivational opportunities

    The Collins Best Practices guides offer new and seasoned managers the essential information they need to achieve more, both personally and professionally. Designed to provide tried-and-true advice from the world's most influential business minds, they feature practical strategies and tips to help you get ahead.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061738975
    Best Practices: Motivating Employees: Bringing Out the Best in Your People
    Author

    Barry Silverstein

    I am an author, blogger, brand historian and retired marketing professional.I have a background in advertising and marketing. I founded a direct and Internet marketing agency and ran it for twenty years, and I have over forty years of business experience.I have authored the following non-fiction books: World War Brands; Boomer Brand Winners & Losers; Boomer Brands; Let's Make Money, Honey: The Couple's Guide to Starting a Service Business - co-author (GuideWords Publishing); The Breakaway Brand - co-author (McGraw-Hill); Business-to-Business Internet Marketing (Maximum Press); Internet Marketing for Technology Companies (Maximum Press); and three books for small business managers in the Collins Best Practices series (HarperCollins). I have also written the following eGuides, all published by 123 eGuides: Branding 123 (Second Edition), B2B Marketing, Low Cost/No Cost Marketing 123, Product Launch 123, Sales Leads 123, and On Your Own 123.I have written two novels: The Doomsday Virus and Water's Edge.I publish a blog for Boomers (www.happilyrewired.com) and a blog for dog lovers (www.cmdog.com).

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      Book preview

      Best Practices - Barry Silverstein

      Preface

      How do you motivate people? How do you get them excited about doing a great job? How can you inspire them to work harder? How can you recognize signs of de-motivation? Or, if you move into a new job and inherit a de-motivated staff, what tactics can you use to turn individuals around? How do you fire someone who refuses to cooperate? How do you keep your staff motivated and moving forward if your company is undergoing major change?

      In this book, we distill the wisdom of some of the best minds in the field of management to tell you how to do a better job at motivating your people and creating an energized, motivated workplace that supports the goals of your company. The language is simple and the design colorful to make the information easy to grasp.

      Quizzes help you assess your knowledge of motivational issues. Case files show how companies have tackled tough motivation problems. Sidebars give you a big-picture look at motivational challenges and highlight innovative, out-of-the-box solutions worth considering. Quotes from business leaders will inspire you as you face your own challenges. Finally, in case you want to dig deeper into the motivational issues, we recommend some of the most important business books available. The authors of these books both influence and reflect today’s thinking about managing people, motivating them, and related issues. Understanding the ideas they cover will inspire you as a manager.

      Even if you don’t dip into these volumes, the knowledge you gain from studying the pages of this book will equip you to deal firmly, effectively, and insightfully with the motivation issues you face every day—to help you make a difference to your company and in the lives of the people who support you.

      THE EDITORS

      Understanding Motivation

      The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.

      —Rick Pitino,

      NCAA basketball coach

      Most people in business would agree that the best employees are motivated ones. Motivated employees are the individuals who take the initiative, who want to do good work, who move up the ranks, and who are generally the most likely to succeed.

      Self-Assessment Quiz

      ARE YOU A MOTIVATIONAL MANAGER?

      Read each of the following statements and indicate whether you agree or disagree. Then check your score at the end.

      I think motivating employees should be the responsibility of management.

      • Agree • Disagree

      I generally can tell when an employee lacks motivation.

      • Agree • Disagree

      I am honest and open in sharing essential information with employees.

      • Agree • Disagree

      I may be demanding, but employees know that they can count on me to support them.

      • Agree • Disagree

      I encourage employees to take ownership of their jobs and feel as if they are part owners of my organization.

      • Agree • Disagree

      I use positive reinforcement often with employees and present negative feedback in a constructive manner.

      • Agree • Disagree

      I care about employees as people and want to help them succeed.

      • Agree • Disagree

      I think it takes more than good pay to motivate employees.

      • Agree • Disagree

      Employees would say that I make them feel good about working in my organization.

      • Agree • Disagree

      Employees would say I inspire them to do their best.

      • Agree • Disagree

      Scoring

      Give yourself 1 point for every question you answered Agree and 0 points for every question you answered Disagree.

      Analysis

      $$

      Employees who are motivated are loyal and dedicated and become ambassadors of good will for their companies. In fact, it’s widely accepted that companies with motivated employees have lower turnover and tend to outpace their competitors in sales and profits. The more motivated your workforce is, the higher your organization’s productivity will be.

      Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.

      —Peter Drucker,

      management guru and author

      (1909–2005)

      $$

      Motivating employees, then, is recognizing that employees are essential to the company’s ability to succeed. It is about building a corporate culture of people who want to be exceptional at their jobs and who are proud of where they work. Motivating employees is not about giving people something they do not deserve or showering them with benefits and rewards so they will work longer hours or accept poor working conditions.

      Behind the Numbers

      DECLINING MOTIVATION

      In about 85 percent of companies, employees’ morale has been found to decline significantly after the first six months in a new job. It then continues to deteriorate for years.

      A 2006 study showed that fair salary and benefits, the opportunity to accomplish good work, and satisfying relationships with coworkers are vital. If just one of these factors is missing, employees are three times less enthusiastic than employees at a company where all three factors are present.

      Findings are based on surveys of about 1.2 million employees at 52 primarily Fortune 1000 companies from 2001 to 2004.

      SOURCE: Stop Demotivating Your Employees! by David Sirota et al., Harvard Management Update (January 2006).

      $$

      Although it is important to keep motivated employees motivated, the larger challenge for managers is finding out what motivates the other employees. Motivation is a very personal thing. What motivates some employees won’t motivate others. Yet there are certain motivators with such wide appeal that most everyone responds positively.

      This book will look at many of these motivators. We’ll also discuss what it takes to be a motivational manager, how to keep employee motivation from falling, and why motivational leadership is essential.

      Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.

      —Stephen R. Covey,

      author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

      $$

      As you consider how to motivate your employees, a basic understanding of the psychology of motivation is helpful.

      The foundation of modern thinking about motivation is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, introduced in 1943 and still used by psychologists, business managers, marketers, and others to understand what motivates people. Maslow theorized that after humans have met their basic physiological needs, they want to satisfy successively higher social and spiritual needs. Maslow identified four levels of needs above the most basic needs for food, sleep, and sex. Maslow’s hierarchy is often shown as a pyramid, with the basic needs at the base, and the need for self-actualization at the tip of the pyramid.

      MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

      Dos & Don’ts

      MOTIVATION IS PERSONAL

      It’s your responsibility as a manager to keep your staff motivated.

      Do get input from employees about what they want before setting up a motivational program.

      Don’t assume that every employee reacts the same way to

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