Total compensation management is key to a motivated workforce. A motivated workforce, of course, is key to lasting business success. That much is clear – how to actually motivate your employees is an effective and lasting way is another matter entirely. There’s an art to motivation that consists of driving energetic productivity with performance-based rewards that serve as meaningful catalysts for employees to do better.
As any manager who has struggled to define exactly what type of total compensation management strategy best fits his or her organization knows, it’s about making intangible things tangible. Finding personal motivating factors and then incorporating them into compensation management is one way to directly boost employee engagement, wrote Business 2 Community contributor Shea Heaver. The trick is that it doesn’t have to be as hard as you might think. In fact, simplicity might be better.
Keep it real by keeping it simple
The more hurdles employees have to leap and walls they have to scale, the further away they’ll be from achieving optimal productivity. Most obstacles probably stem from some aspect in which management intends to improve efficiency, but to employees rules and directives often come off as arbitrary. Having to chip away at less than meaningful tasks can make personnel feel less fulfilled by their work. If they feel like they’re tied to various benchmarks and checkboxes in order to do their jobs and indicate that they’re doing them well, the work loses meaning and productivity dwindles. Instead, look toward collaborative strategies that prioritize employee interaction over siloed activity.
To go simple, remove silos. Walls and barriers box employees in and actually encourage them to only work independently, wrote Entrepreneur contributor Beth Kuhel. While self-sufficiency can often be beneficial, it’s not as helpful when employees feel like they’re pursuing high performance in isolation. She wrote that organizations should focus on developing total compensation management techniques that encourage collaboration and communication. One way to do this is establish feedback loops, which encourage employees to face the consequences of their actions. Seeing how their activities affect others can be a powerful way to drive meaning. This increased reciprocity only comes when the organization removes barriers between employees.
“The biggest companies can begin to operate more efficiently, like small ones, once they start behaving internally in a more entrepreneurial way,” Kuhel wrote. “Showing concern for employees and empowering them to participate in the business requires a reevaluation of organizational management and processes.”
