Motivating or demotivating employees

Internal Communication and HR: Employee Motivation

Many companies nowadays focus on innovation or customer contact or competitors and often forget to take care of their most valuable asset: their employees. It is not a secret that without employees no company could ever exist. Yet we have to keep in mind that an employee present does not equal employee contributing.

In order to research what would drive employees to contribute maximally in the work process several scientific fields have been developed, some of them adopted by HR-specialists, some of them – by marketing and communication professionals. One of the most salient fields is concerned with motivation and in this case – employee motivation in particular.

Employee motivation is very important because it not only helps enhance performance; it also contributes to image management, prevention of and reaction to a crisis. Employees are essential when it comes to productivity and innovation. But employees can just the same popularize your company as a company with a great working environment and standards, etc. The stand of employees is also critical when it comes to overcoming a crisis. Keep in mind that the media will be more than happy to find that one unsatisfied employee ready to trash you and be sure they will find them.

Those reasons seem more than enough to stress the importance of keeping employees happy. Whereas there is a whole field researching different employee satisfaction factors, motivation is that factor which more or less encompasses every perception connected to work and translates it into readiness to work harder tomorrow than today.

Given the number of studies and the importance of the issue recognized by scholars it is difficult to understand how come so many companies overlook this crucial element of success. Sometimes mistakes in that area could be so big and with such visible results and still nothing happens.

In my experience, most often and biggest mistakes management can make are excluding employees of decision making, not recognizing and rewarding efforts and results, allowing disagreement in goal setting (the set goals are not supported by employees), being dishonest or trying to play employees when it comes to salary or benefits, and creating a stressful environment where the stakes are too high and the efforts are not enough or not channeled correctly.
 

The results here can vary from zero motivation to conscious sabotage of the company. Management should not make the mistake of underestimating the seriousness of the issue. Therefore it is crucial to monitor employee motivation and to work proactively for its enhancement.

Monitoring employee motivation is usually responsibility of HR as they have a whole toolset for that starting with surveys and personal dialogues and including monitoring results, number of days off work, sickness, taking initiative or part in discussions, etc. HR has also the ability to create a diverse and complex motivation program fitting the need of most employees.

However, there is still that element dependent on management: management should allow for inclusion of employees in decision making and should ensure fair employee management before starting to think about HR.

Communication professionals in most of the cases are educated in management and HR. Their role is to be connecting link between departments, between employees and management, between the organization and the outside world. They will be the first to notice problems in the organization and that is why you should take their warnings into consideration and act accordingly and timely.

DIDI