Most people believe that the best way to understand your employees and motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink in his persuasive book, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others. He states that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, or elsewhere—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

According to a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, when employees at a company perceive that any one of their four needs has been met, they report a 30% higher capacity to focus, a nearly 50% higher level of engagement, and a 63% greater likelihood to stay at the company.

What do organisations and leaders need to do to create a highly motivated workforce? In a nutshell, they need to identify the needs that motivate their employees (what employees’ value) and create a healthy work environment that addresses these needs.

It’s important to note that most of these needs and expectations are unexpressed by employees. It is up to the employer/ organisation/ leader to develop a good system of company communications, employee relations, training and development that will lead to environment of openness, cooperation, teamwork, and motivation that will benefit all parties involved.

Recognition

Recognise and reward employees often in public and in private. To your employees, this means celebrating team and individual successes, running regular recognition and appreciation programs like team of the week, company values-based awards, achievement awards, tenure awards, performance appraisals and bonuses, raises, and adopting a rounded training and development process.

Employee engagement surveys

Employee engagement surveys are pivotal in understanding the involvement and willingness of employees to perform their jobs and contribute to the success of their organisation. Though this isn’t a new concept it has become more popular than ever. The reason being, modern managers are keener in knowing the factors that could engage or disengage employees.

Once the management decides to conduct an employee engagement survey, the next step is to consider what type of survey and questionnaire format should be chosen in order to get maximum possible results. The companies may seek advice from consultants to decide the most appropriate type of employee engagement survey considering the nature of their business and the level they are operating it.

Here are three key points that’s helpful for fostering employee development and improving staff retention:

• Discussing employees’ vision and goals for the future
• Cross department training
• Keeping training relevant with engaging, entertaining and focused content
• Using self-paced learning to enhance the learning experience

At Site Online Learning we help organisations understand their employees better by providing effective, engaging and focused training and development solutions. If you are looking for more information, we are happy to offer a free consultation with one of our experts - you can complete the form below, call 1300 800 288 or email contact@so.edu.au.