LME021 – How to motivate employees in the workplace

Your employees don’t contribute, they lack motivation, but they are always looking for better pay? I’ll show you how to motivate your employees.

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How to motivate employees with money

Money may be attractive, but it has no sustained impact on employee motivation nor on employee commitment!

Please don’t take this the wrong way. If you don’t pay your employees an adequate income, then you’ll demotivate your employees! They will not be commited to work for you.

But the inverse conclusion will only work on an exception basis: If you pay an above average income, this will by no means result in your employees being more motivated or more commited over the long haul.

Intrinic and extrinsic motivation

There is an important difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. What the difference is and why you need to have intrinsically motivated employees you can read here: How employee motivation really works!

You need intrinsic motivation

Intrinsically motivated people have 3 characteristics:

1. Desire for self-determination

They want to work independently on a task with the greatest possible elbow room.
This means for your employees: Tell them about the goal, but give them the freedom to decide how they reach the goal.

2. Strive for excellence

Intrinsic motivated people want to grow with the task. They want to continue improving themselves on an issue that they feel is important to them. This means: Hepl your employees to become better in what they are doing. Help them with your feedback and offer them training.

3. Purpose

The things they do must have a purpose. In performing their task, they want to be part of something larger than themselves.
Talk about the company vision. Talk about the why. Why are you doing what you do. Why should they care to work for you?

The funny thing with intrinsic motivation:

If you take care about these 3 points you automatically take care that your employees don’t get demotivated.

Assume that your employees are motivated – at least when they start working for your company. What happens mostly is that people get demotivated over time by buerocracy or a bad boss.

Therefore: Your task as a leader is not to learn how to motivate employees. Instead, tell them about your business vision and the why and take care that you don’t demotivate them!

The inspiring quote

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”

Theodore M. Hesburgh