We’ve spoken before about how to create a happy, productive workplace and the importance of communicating with your employees on a personal as well as a business level (How to Create a Happier, More Productive Workplace).
While it is important to identify and convey your business vision and create a “cause” for your employees to rally around, do you know how to create passion for the work?  What TRULY motivates each of your employees individually to WANT to do their best work – for themselves, for you and for your business?

There are 6 main categories of things that motivate employees.

It’s important to identify which of those 6 is really the biggest motivator for each employee, what is the second biggest motivator, and what do they really not care about.

1.  Obviously, pay is significantly important to a lot of people.

For some people, pay is their primary goal.  That’s why they go to work; they’re looking for money to spend on things that they want and to see the fruits of their labor.  For everyone, pay is a part of it.  It often allows them to exercise their other motivated interests.  For a salesperson, pay is very important.

2.  The second thing is recognition.

Some employees crave being seen as a leader, as someone who is successful, being given the opportunity to be in the limelight amongst your peers, customers or friends.  Recognition can sometimes be as strong, if not stronger, an interest as pay.  A lot of companies forget to thank people, recognize them in front of others, and do things that will ultimately allow them to end up paying less and have a more motivated employee.

3.  Third is the opportunity for training.

A lot of people have an interest in gaining and learning and building themselves into better people.  They really appreciate getting exposure and opportunities to get more knowledge.  If they feel like they’re stagnated somewhere, they may feel that their job isn’t going anywhere, even if they’re making more money.  Sometimes, especially in certain disciplines such as engineers, computer technicians, or other jobs that have a lot of moving knowledge bases associated with them, giving them opportunities or paying for them to go to training can be as much if not more of a motivator as the others.

4.  A social agenda is the fourth strong motivator.

Some people see their social agenda as being above anything else that they do on a daily basis.  The opportunity for the company to be involved in or for them to be involved in through the company opening doors of various nonprofit type opportunities or some way for them to give back or to extend their social agenda into other environments.

5.  For some, it’s actually a sense of community, it’s a feeling of, “This is my family.”

Maybe they have extended family spread throughout the country and maybe they don’t have family outside of the workplace.  That sense of team unity, that sense that everyone is coming together and being one group and the feeling that comes of being a part of that and knowing that they’re supporting each other.  It’s actually a significant motivator for people in the military. Who really see and appreciate that their brothers are there with them, their team, their squad are part of one group and they are there to support them, and that sticks with them through their whole life, whether they’re being paid by the military or not.

6.  The last one is work-life flexibility.

You need the ability to understand what their system for living is, what they want to emphasize in their life, and to allow them to exercise that as being the method or system for living in their life.  So, if they place a high emphasis as an example on being there for their kids when they need them, and you give them the ability to have the flexibility to do that, you may get paid in multiple, multiple dividends at 8:30 after the kids are in bed, versus making them stay for that extra half hour creating a sense where the kids have to come home to an empty house for even half an hour, and as soon as the time rolls around their outta there and they won’t do another thing for you.

So it’s really a matter of figuring out what’s the importance of pay, of recognition, of training, of promoting their social agenda, providing a sense of community or providing work-life flexibility.  If you take those 6 main areas, or derivations of those, and identify the primary motivator, the secondary motivator, and what doesn’t really matter to each employee – not as a group, but individually  – and start feeding those motivators and tying those into the personal and business goals that you’ve set with them and then discuss them regularly with care in the one-on-ones that center around and are driven by the company vision, you’re going to have a team of employees that really want to support and drive energy toward wherever you want to go with your company.