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What motivates your people?

I was talking with one of my executive coaching clients today in a coaching session and the topic of employee morale come up. In a recent survey his employees were asked to evaluate “morale” at work. Morale is such a broad subject to evaluate. It can mean different things to different people.

One thing I know for sure, whenever studies are conducted on "what motivates your people", being appreciated is on the top of the list .

Motivating Employees

One recent survey was developed by Accountemps, the world’s first and largest specialized staffing service for temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals. The survey was conducted by an independent research firm and includes responses from more than 1,400 CFOs from a stratified random sample of U.S. companies with more than 20 employees and 536 full- or part-time office workers. Here is what they found to be the top three:

Frequent recognition of accomplishments CFO’s-30% Employees-35%
Regular communication with staff CFO’s-36% Employees-20%
Giving employees increased responsibility CFO’s-20% Employees-17%

As you can see, appreciate is in the top three.

My coaching client said they recently had to make some budget cuts and some of the cuts would affect the budget for recognition programs. To which I countered, "It doesn't always take a lot of money to make people feel appreciated".

In my leadership development workshop “Unleashing Motivation” I share “83 Ways to Show You Care”. These are all inexpensive/no cost ways to show your people that you care about them. Here are a few*:

1. Smile
2. Greet by name
3. Send a handwritten note
4. Say “Good Morning”
5. Ask, “How are you?” – and—
6. Wait for an answer
7. Sent Letter of Praise to employee’s home
8. Listen
9. Accept suggestions
10. Compliment them
11. Be pleasant
12. Share necessary information
13. Show trust
14. Be approachable
15. Ask questions
16. Laugh with them
17. Believe in them

Try a few of these out and let me know how they work for you? E-mail me at Patrick@PatrickDonadio.com



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