Low-cost ways to motivate your employees

According to a recent report by an international employee recruitment firm, Generation Y (ages 18 – 25) employees expect employers to challenge them and give them ample opportunities to grow professionally. As well, 36% of these employees don't see themselves in the same job 2 years down the road.

Meeting the demands of this new generation of employees is now at the top of the agenda for small and medium-sized businesses, particularly with a Canadian labour shortage on the horizon. As an entrepreneur, you'll have to motivate employees to stay loyal to your firm with more satisfying jobs, ongoing training and anything else that makes you stand out from your competitors.

Yet despite the popular belief that wooing employees is a costly venture for small businesses, the reality is that employee motivation can involve little or no cost.

Here are a few pointers:

Make the job motivating
Pressed for time, few entrepreneurs prepare written job descriptions. However, experts agree that improvising is not a winning strategy. The more accurate and realistic you are about specifications and job requirements for the position, the more likely that your people will feel motivated to do a good job. It's important to:

• Get your employees involved in writing their job descriptions, so they feel they have genuine input.
• Put the emphasis on active, engaging verbs such as "analyzes", "sets up" or "operates."
• Build in clear goals so that employees can see visible progress and results.
• Ensure that the work is challenging enough for the employee: don't hire somebody with too many skills for the job. Generation Y employees don't like jobs that feel trivial.
• Give your employees enough leeway to be independent, which encourages personal and professional development.
• Compensate your employees based on their performance.

• Be systematic about performance evaluation for every employee, no matter what level in your company.
• Link the performance evaluation to your compensation program, so that employees take it seriously.
• Give feedback often - both praise and constructive criticism.
• Mention positive aspects first, then difficult points, finishing with a solution or mentioning a positive action that may help.
• Encourage your employees to evaluate themselves. This gives you an accurate picture of how they view their performance. It can also reveal where improvement is needed.
• Establish realistic performance objectives for your employees and make sure they understand and agree.
• Rely on simple, ongoing feedback techniques, such as:
  • personal congratulations for a job well-done
  • personal notes from managers to mark a good performance
  • recognizing employee performance and promotions in vehicles such as internal newsletters
  • showing your team confidence so that even average performers feel motivated to give more

• Give your top performers some leeway. Avoid micromanaging and give them the room to do their best.
• Get their input often. If you don't seek their ideas, they'll stop giving them to you.
• Reward excellent performance with extra perks. However, be modest and be careful not to create an atmosphere of resentment with massive bonuses, for example.
• Point out where they need to improve; you want to encourage even your best performers to strive harder.
• Praise top performers when they excel. Don't assume that they know they're doing a good job.

Give employees innovative perks
In today's demanding business world, many employees are looking for perks beyond monetary compensation, stock options and profit-sharing.

• Consider options such as flexible hours.
• Give employees "downtime" when they've worked hard. Employees tend to want perks such as more time off rather than more money.
• Allow employees to work at home.

Reinforce team spirit
The fact is motivated employees, who sing from the same song sheet, contribute their best. Keep these ideas in mind in order to reinforce team spirit.

• Encourage people to interact outside the office environment, i.e., dinners or sports events.
• Put employees at ease by holding informal gatherings at your home.
• Assign a buddy for new employees to help them during orientation.
• Avoid creating hierarchy by assigning perks such as more office space and free parking.

Ultimately, your employee motivation strategies can be built into a sound human resources plan. To help you develop that plan, you can use the services of a BDC consultant.