How To Boost Employee Motivation In The Workplace

Many business owners recognize that employee motivation and development opportunities are essential in fostering a positive work culture. However, it can be challenging to encourage employees to connect with the business beyond the workplace. By understanding and incorporating different strategies to boost employee motivation, you can support your team members on their journey toward increased job satisfaction, high employee engagement, and enhanced employee productivity. This may include offering extrinsic rewards and nurturing their internal drive to unlock their full potential as motivated employee contributors.

Understanding employee motivation

Various strategies can elevate overall staff morale, but understanding the needs and wants of your employees is often the first part. If your company’s mission and objective is employee retention, ensure your employees feel valued and have a sense of intrinsic motivation and belonging in their work relationships. If your goal is mutual profitability, you may want to motivate your employees to strive harder to achieve this.

Most managers aim for a dual outcome of retention and company productivity, which necessitates HR teams to strike a balance between improving motivation and building a positive experience. By taking the time to support employees in their growth and recognizing their self-worth, you may be able to boost employee engagement and improve staff morale. 

To truly engage and retain your best employees, it can be key to recognize their efforts in ways that resonate with them. Aiming for work-life balance, providing natural light in the workspace, or involving them in the next project can make a significant impact. By aligning company goals with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, starting with physiological needs and progressing towards self-actualization, we can ensure employees work in an environment where top talent and star performers can thrive. 

Seven strategies that can help boost employee engagement

Below are seven strategies management and HR teams can use to motivate employees and team members. These techniques may help employees feel appreciated while rewarding them for doing a good job and maintaining their hard work in the workplace. These techniques can be applied in the same way across different departments and ensure that employees are motivated consistently. 

1. Acknowledge positive behavior

Recognizing and rewarding positive behavior can be an important first step to help boost motivation among your best employees. Whether it's a team member exceeding customer expectations or maintaining a positive attitude, your acknowledgment lets employees know you're spending time observing their efforts, which can significantly encourage motivation. Employee recognition may also motivate employees to continue to work hard and strive for business best practices, whether they work from home or the workplace.

2.  Encourage everyone to discuss their thoughts

Motivating employees often involves giving them a sense of control over their work outcomes and valuing employee engagement in the workplace. In the workplace, involving employees in meaningful work and decision-making can incentivize them to contribute more effectively to the organization. You might offer development opportunities, such as annual reviews and platforms to discuss ideas. Seeking input on company policies or including them in crucial projects can provide a sense of control and result in higher overall motivation, promoting collaboration among other employees. It also allows a manager to provide support and timely feedback more effectively when everyone discusses their thought processes.

3.  Set reasonable goals and prevent burnout

Pushing your employees to perform exceptionally may produce effective results, but expecting those outcomes within an unreasonable time frame or with an excessive expenditure of effort may prove counterproductive. With the big picture in mind, employees can set measurable goals. Breaking larger goals down into smaller steps is often more likely to lead to productive outcomes and keep employees motivated.

4.  Encourage freedom

Another way to cultivate motivation is by giving them the freedom to set their own workplace priorities, encouraging a remote working culture, allowing flexible work hours or daily schedules, and other key factors that contribute to productivity. These examples may not be realistic for all business models, but there are other ways to give employees more control over their decisions in the workplace environment. Regardless of the opportunities, allotting freedom to your employees may encourage them to take ownership of their jobs and motivate them more.

5.  Provide tenure

Job tenure is often an aspect that resonates well within most companies. Ensuring that your employees feel confident in this area for the foreseeable future may also encourage job ownership. Employees who are confident they will stay employed with the company often push themselves to succeed and invest more time, effort, and energy into helping the business thrive.

6.  Make teamwork work

Organizing your employees into teams where they can work together can cultivate even more confidence by giving them a platform on which to exchange ideas and solve problems as a group. Working within a team may also encourage healthy bonding between your employees, cultivate a more relaxed atmosphere, and create a more fun environment that values well-being.

7.  Provide rewards

Rewards don’t always have to occur because of something specific your employee has done to contribute to the company’s success. Motivating employees by offering rewards for important things like continued loyalty and positive performance reviews can be just as impactful—and not all rewards have to involve money. Studies show that when it comes to increased success in the workplace, giving employees more vacation time may be even more effective than monetary rewards. Giving ample time for vacation may help maintain energy levels, focus, and productivity.

Seeking expert assistance to motivate employees

If you’re finding it difficult to raise morale and increase motivation, consulting with a professional, such as an industrial or organizational psychologist who understands the dynamics between motivation and the workplace environment, may help. Industrial/organizational psychologists work with individuals and teams to maximize productivity in the workplace, but they also sometimes help make hiring decisions and train employees. Typically, you’ll find these types of psychologists working in human resources departments.

Workplace well-being don’t just occur at an organizational level; sometimes, improvement depends upon the individuals within the organization- particularly those in decision-making capacities. Learning how to increase motivation often begins with examining the habits and behaviors of management. Therefore, it’s often beneficial for leaders to seek professional advice, sometimes in the form of personal therapy, for improving their own mental health and well-being so that they may provide strong leadership for others.  

The leadership skills required to implement these positive behaviors and ensure they remain consistent don’t always come easily. That’s where consulting with a licensed professional can help. However, many busy managers don’t feel comfortable taking the extra time out of their day to visit a therapist in person. Or, because of societal stigma toward psychotherapy, some may not feel comfortable visiting one at all.

How therapy can help boost employee motivation 

Platforms like BetterHelp can remove common barriers to treatment and provide leaders with counseling to become more effective managers, employees, and colleagues. Online therapy allows you the freedom to choose when and where you consult with your mental health professional, and it provides a measure of discreetness that in-person therapy may not. An online therapist can help you understand what behaviors can facilitate achieving your goals and how to implement strategies to adopt those beneficial habits. 

Online therapy has been shown to be effective in managing a variety of mental health conditions. Since stress, anxiety, depression, and more can contribute to reduced work performance and more absences, it’s important for employees to look after their mental health. One study assessed the effectiveness of an online intervention for improving well-being and productivity in the workplace. Researchers found that occupational digital mental health interventions improved workers’ psychological well-being and increased their work effectiveness.