How To Motivate Employees Explained With 25 Amazing Ways

How to motivate employees?

It's a self-explanatory question that often bothers an employer or an HR while planning for more productivity and growth.

Motivation drives us to do and create great work.

It fuels the task at hand and pushes us to achieve our objectives. The same principle of motivation applies to our daily work-life as well.

When we talk about motivation, both Extrinsic motivation and Intrinsic motivation need to be considered. There has been this decades long debate on Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic motivation and which is a better fit. But the answer is to be able to find a balance.

As an employer or an HR, you must have come across the term self-motivated whenever you looked at a resume. However, it’s doubtful that an employee will stay self-motivated at his/her job forever.

The truth here is that they tend to lose their enthusiasm and willpower in their jobs with the passing time. Owing to this fact, the only way to uphold their efficiency and increased productivity is to motivate employees at work every day.

Inability to keep your employees motivated at the workplace could impose a heavy penalty on the employers in the form of a disengaged workforce.

Here in this blog, I’ll equip you with ideas that would help you motivate employees to do much better.

Let’s begin!

How to Motivate Employees- The 25 Best Techniques To Follow

1. Healthy Work Environment

Ensuring a healthy work environment is the first step towards ensuring that the employees are well motivated. Creating and encouraging such an environment is totally at the disposal of employers.

The elements for creating a healthy work environment can be both tangible and intangible. In the tangible aspect, it is the look and feel of the workplace.

An aesthetic and spacious workplace can be a huge add-on for alleviating the moods of the employees. Furthermore, you can compliment the same with motivational quotes and sayings posted around the workplace. Also, you can add some plants and foliage, which would help keep the atmosphere calm and clean. The intangible aspect promotes better in-house communication, efficient conflict resolution, and timely rewards.

2. Celebrate Employee Milestones

Employees work hard and often have to encounter tremendous stress and pressure while doing their jobs. And believe me, you can't balance out their dedication with handsome remuneration. Here, making them feel gratified by celebrating their successes and milestones is the only way to go. It instills the thought amongst the employees that they and their contribution is worthy to their organization.

In the end, it’s the employees who feel good and satisfied working for the company who go the extra mile.

3. Ensure Better Communication

Communication plays a significant role when it comes to motivating employees. Let me explain this with a small scenario!

Suppose an employee wants to express his/her remarks regarding any issue at the workplace. Or let’s say there’s a new hire who started his first day at his/her job. In such cases, not maintaining proper communication from the first day onwards is enough to demotivate employees. Thus, having a good workplace communication plays a crucial role in determining employee motivation.

4. Encourage Professional Development

Employees aspire to learn and grow in their field of work.

And it’s natural! As an employer, you should always make it a point to encourage your employees to keep learning and developing their skills.

Additionally, you can provide your employees with a range of online learning materials or hold in-house classes. This will keep your employees active and updated with the latest skills and practices in the industry. Thus, positively affecting the motivation levels of your employees.

5. Welcome New Ideas

As an employer, you should always give your employees some room for generating new ideas. When employees know that their thoughts and opinions are taken into consideration, they become proactive. And this proactiveness makes them more confident and self-motivated.

Employees who know their thoughts and ideas are heard and given a chance also make the best of the team members to have on a project.

6. Embrace a Culture of Appreciation

Developing a culture of appreciation is quintessential for keeping up the motivation levels of your employees. Employees like it when they are appreciated for their good work. The impact of appreciation in increasing employee motivation is more visible when it’s an integral part of the company goals and vision.

There’s no doubt that appreciation is the prime element to motivate employees. According to a report, 66% of employees are more likely to leave their job if they don’t feel appreciated.

Employees appreciated by their managers or peers yield better results and work harder than those who rarely or never get appreciated.

Related article - 30 Best Words of Appreciation for Employees

7. Meaningful Rewards for Employees

Giving meaningful rewards to your employees is very important to win them over. As a great manager, you cannot just conclude by saying a “Thank You” to the employees who have worked hard. You can always opt for giving them a small token of appreciation or a personalized gift item while appreciating them.

A personalized gift item will make the employee feel like he/she is cared for, thereby adding to their motivation. You must also make it a point to maintain the business decorum and not be too personal.

Moreover, with a wide array of corporate gifting solutions and a cloud-based employee benefits platform you can make the task of delivering meaningful rewards seamless and easy.

8. Timely Recognition

Recognition delayed is recognition denied. And it’s one of the significant causes of employee demotivation.

The majority of today’s workforce consists of millennial workers. These workers demand instant gratification for their outstanding work. And recognizing their efforts instantly is something every employer should keep in mind.

Recognizing an employees efforts instantly after their accomplishments instil the thought of being valued by their higher-ups and their peers.

9. Get them the Right Tools

Every one of us wants to work with the best tools in hand. Indeed it is the first thing that a modern-day employee looks at their workplaces. Access to the best and updated tools is very effective in keeping the workers stick to their jobs.

This in fact, directly impacts the level of employee satisfaction on a positive note. And when the employees are well satisfied, they stay highly motivated to give their best at work.

10. Organize Health Challenges

One of the major reasons behind a disengaged workforce is the sedentary lifestyle around workplaces these days. Employees now spend more time in front of their screen without much or no physical movement at all. Thereby adversely affecting an employees’ overall health. And at the same time giving rise to many chronic diseases, especially related to their heart.

Unhealthiness drives an employee towards demotivation. This is mainly because they are not able to do his/her work with the same agility as compared to their healthier part.

To mitigate this issue, employers can organize health challenges within the organization on a regular basis. This will help the employees stay fit and motivated. And the employers to raise the bar of employee engagement within the organization.

11. Encourage Peer to Peer Recognition

Employees’ co-workers are the ones who are the nearest to them at work every day. Their colleagues know better how much effort they put into their work. And how efficiently they handle the given tasks at hand.

And keeping this fact in mind, who can be better than their peers themselves who could recognize and motivate their co-workers. Encouraging peer to peer recognition to motivate employees also paves the way towards a collaborative work environment.

12. Give Them Their Personal Space

Working for the organization, employees also need some “Me Time” for themselves. Factors like overwork and stress lead the employees towards exhaustion and demotivation. Therefore, it becomes imperative to allow employees some time to detox from work stress.

Employees who enjoy a sound work-life balance are able to cope with workplace stress in a much better way. Thus, lack of motivation rarely remains a matter of concern for those employees.

13. Impart Financial Wellness Lessons

Being an HR or a manager, you will surely agree that many employees still struggle to maintain sound finances. These issues hurt an employee's wellbeing and productivity which shouldn’t be overlooked. And it’s another big reason which leaves the employees demotivated.

As a caring employer, you can help your employees to avoid such situations. For the same, you can impart sessions of proper financial planning to your employees.

These sessions will help the employees set their finances on track and help them in the long run. Moreover, it also improves the trust and confidence of employees in their employers.

14. In-house Games

Keeping your employees active and moving doesn’t mean keeping them busy at their work tables. It is a misconception among various employers leading towards high employee burnout rates.

Employees also need some rest to let go of their stress and rejuvenate themselves. You can also facilitate them with in-house games like carrom, chess, pool table, table tennis, etc. Playing games is the best stress reliever, plus it also improves camaraderie between the player.

15. Encourage Teamwork

There’s nothing impossible when like-minded individuals come together to achieve common goals. But even with the best people on board, they need the motivation to kick start their work and accomplish their goals. For building a motivated team, you need to rise above workplace bureaucracy and become a part of it.

Motivating your employees becomes more effective and easier when you’re well connected to them. Supporting them by being a part of the team through constant communication and appreciation is indeed a great way to motivate employees.

16. Incentivize the Extra Efforts

Many employees lose their hopes and motivation when they are neither recognized nor appropriately rewarded for their extra efforts. And this mostly leads to employee turnover, where the employer often ends up losing their talented workers.

However, here the most effective way to deal with this is to incentivize the extra efforts of the employees. This task becomes even handier with the help of a cloud-based employee engagement platform. Such platforms let employers recognize, reward, and incentivize employees instantly on the go.

17. Encourage Friendly Workplace Competitions

Challenges are essential for our growth and development. Whenever we come across a challenge, we tend to give our best to complete it. Employees like it too when they face healthy challenges in the workplace. Here the sense of gratification on winning the challenge plays the main role. And as such, promoting friendly competition in the workplace is another great way to motivate employees.

These challenges or competitions bring out inner sportsmanship within the employees. Thus, motivating employees and at the same time build better workplace camaraderie.

18. Encourage Reading

Reading is a very effective stress reliever. Plus, it also helps the readers to expand their knowledge about various things. Encouraging your employees to embrace the habit of reading will also help in their own professional development.

For the same, you can facilitate your workers with a reading space complimented by a mini library. We also have a similar arrangement at our workplace. It’s the wisest way to keep the employees motivated.

Furthermore, it makes the workplace more likable for the employees who seek knowledge at their workplaces.

19. Additional Activities

Too much work is one of the main causes of dull and demotivated employees. And such a workspace is no place for productivity and innovation.

Here, for motivating the employees, one of your aims should be towards creating a lively workplace. To fill in the void of liveliness at the workplace you can always bring in some extra engagement activities.

These activities may range anything from yoga sessions to live jamming rooms. Such activities not only add fun to the workplace. But also have a positive effect on keeping employee morale high.

20. Free Food and Beverages

Food is the way to reach everyone’s hearts. And the route becomes even shorter when it’s free or complimentary. Top companies adopt the same strategy of motivating employees by providing them with free food and beverages like Google.

However, by planning to go the same way for motivating employees. You can also lay emphasis on keeping them fit by curating a healthy menu. Thus, ensuring both healthy and motivated employees at one go.

21. Maintain Transparency

Motivation always comes based on what your employee feel and think about the workplace. Your employees may not say it, but they are often left demotivated when kept under the clouds regarding workplace matters. Overall keeping the employees in the dark about specific company affairs, if not all, is a big mistake.

Therefore, maintaining transparency with your employees is another big factor for keeping up the spirit of your employees.

22. Allocation of Tasks

One of the things I got to know from my own colleagues while writing this article is that they feel more motivated when given something of their interests. As such, allocating tasks to the employees plays a vital role in cheering them up.

Assigning tasks to the employees which they enjoy doing is enough to boost their confidence.

Furthermore, it also gives the employers a clear picture of the capabilities and weaknesses of their employees.

23. Flexible Work Schedule

Employees nowadays have to struggle a lot to maintain a perfect balance between their personal and professional lives. However, facilitating them with a flexible work schedule can be termed as the most suitable solution here. It would not only let your employees enjoy a sound work-life balance but will also boost up their trust in you as their employer. Thus, adding more plus points to their level of motivation in the workplace.

24. Team Events and Outings

Building camaraderie at the workplace is very important for keeping the spirit of your workforce high. For promoting the same, you can plan and organize team events or outings like brunches, dinner, etc., from time to time.

Believe me, the motivation for doing great things at the workplace comes when all your employees are close and stand united.

25. Workplace Surveys

Conducting workplace surveys from time to time is very essential to keep track of the employee satisfaction levels within the organization. These surveys help employers know about the issues that may be bothering the employees and swiftly act on them.

The confidence and trust of employees rise in their employers when they know that their issues are heard and taken care of by their employers.

Summing Up

The two main factors behind a successful business are financial stability and efficient human resources. Here, the later one still holds the top priority for taking businesses to new heights.

As such, upholding the efficiency and increased productivity of employees become very important. And the only option with the employers to ensure the same is to motivate employees.

Do you have some more ideas on how to motivate employees? If yes, then do drop us an email. We'd love to include your suggestions on this list. We also recommend pinning some motivational quotes for work that will serve as an excellent mood booster.

Working as a SEO Analyst and Content Marketer at Vantage Circle, Angshuman always stays curious and is passionate about learning new things. Got any question? Drop a mail at editor@vantagecircle.com