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Taking the traditional, one-dimensional view of employee motivation is far from a recipe for success. In the past, businesses have been guilty of using the carrot and a stick approach, with a heavy emphasis on the stick. More recently, leaders have realized that positive behavioural motivation methods are a much more effective way to boost business performance.
However, methods such as gamification (the use of badges, points, and levels) alone won't create a sustained boost in business performance. While they can provide a short-term spike, only when they are deployed with careful planning and with constant analysis and tuning will they provide lasting benefits. What you really need to drive engagement among your employees is a multi-dimensional approach that harnesses positivity.
We've compiled five top tips to help your business get the most from its workers and create a sustained improvement in business performance:
A basic fact of life is that everyone is different. To get results, you have to motivate people in a way that suits their personalities. For some, competition is the best approach, while others thrive through teamwork. Understanding how people are driven to produce their best work can be daunting to confront, due to the expansiveness of peoples' personalities, but there is an easy way to approach it.
If you consider the verbs you would use to describe the types of behaviour that a person displays, you can fit them into a category. For example, if someone makes you think of words like "win" or "brag,” you can conclude that competition would suit them. If a person reminds you of verbs such as "share" or "help,” you can assume that working as a team would deliver the best results.
The key ingredient in keeping an employee engaged for the long-haul is learning. Mastering a cognitive skill keeps users coming back for more. Learning and mastery are feelings that people crave. The challenge however, is ensuring that you don't make the experience too difficult for a rookie or too easy for an expert.
To counter this, a balanced approach needs to be implemented. As a user gains experience with the software and challenges being issued, the level of difficulty should rise with them. It is critical that any gamification solution is user-friendly and intuitive. Think easy to on-board, yet difficult to master.
To keep an employee engaged, you need to ensure that they are continually stimulated. The way to approach this is to promote positive aspects of peoples' personalities, by encouraging and rewarding examples of positivity, such as pride and trust. You also have to create and encourage relationships between the team members. A happy and trusting team is an engaged and productive one.
One of the easiest mistakes to make when implementing game mechanics in the workplace is solely seeking immediate improvements. The long-term journey is what is the most vital. A common complaint with game mechanics is that users suffer from game fatigue, something created by poorly aligned challenges and thoughtless communication.
The key to addressing this is maintaining a consistent level of dialogue between yourself and participants, making sure they are regularly reminded of what they have learned and why. This rewards individuals with recognition, motivating them with evidence of their own progression. A well thought-out strategy for implementing game mechanics will ensure that individuals are motivated in the way that suits them.
The greatest myth about motivation is money. People are not driven solely by financial rewards and, in many cases, react far better to intrinsic rewards. These tap into personal goals and achievements, which are far stronger than the traditional, one-dimensional approach of money.
Engaging your employees through strong, positive activities, such as belonging to a team, learning new tasks, mastering old ones, and working autonomously, drives them to innovate and be more productive. Positive emotions need to be fostered and supported, which, in turn, will drive productivity and allow people to work in a way that fits them best.
Learn additional helpful tips for inspiring your sales team by reading this free e-book.
