Money is the easiest and least personal way to motivate people — that is, if you have money.
Why people care
If you don’t have money, you need to get down to the real business of making people actually care about what they are working on.
Money is not a lasting motivator
The one thing that differentiates money from all the other motivators is that if you give people enough money you can treat them like crap.
I know many companies that take this route. If you have enough money to spread around, why bother investing personal time and effort in recognizing employees’ contributions?
But if you run out of money…
…People will go somewhere else for the same pay where they won’t get as abused or ingnored. I’ve seen this happen over and over again when the economy or market turns, and the money for bonuses runs out. If the pay is equal, people choose not to be tortured.
Money doesn’t buy loyalty, it only rents effort.
Personal Recognition Works Wonders
The organizations with the most loyal employees have a strong habit of personal recognition.
People don’t work for money, they work for meaning.
Just Say “Thank You”
A big motivator for making people feel like their work has meaning is simply recognizing when someone does a good job and saying thank you – personally.
You don’t need to over complicate this with processes, nominations, reviews, and spreadsheets. Just always say thanks, when someone does something great.
How do you know when good things happen?
The trouble that organizations face is not that they are stingy with thank you’s, it’s just that they don’t have a way of knowing when good things happen.
This is really easy to fix.
Make Recognition a staff process
Just make it clear to your staff that you want to know when anyone in your organization does something remarkable.
Spend time in each executive staff meeting on recognition. When someone deserves to be recognized, have an executive outside their organization go say thank you personally. As the GM make a phone call or send a hand-written note.
In these days a hand written note is a work of art! It definitely stands out.
The element of surprise
Sadly, people don’t expect to be recognized. So when you do it, it’s a remarkable experience for them.
Surprise: I know the times in my career when a big executive outside of my business thanked me personally for something I did, it was incredibly motivating.
Notes: When I have sent hand written notes to sales people that exceeded 150% of quota, I got phone calls from them thanking ME for the notes!
It’s contagious: One time someone in my organization did something brilliant to simplify the product line. She got a huge personal thank you from the Manufacturing VP, because it increased our margins. Not only was she on top of the world, but everyone in her group saw it happen and was motivated too.
That one thank you made my whole organization feel like their work was noticed.
Never just give people the money.
If you do have money, don’t waste the opportunity to motivate, and set high expectations for continued great work in the future. This is a prime opportunity to give someone both a financial and personal reward.
Make it a significant conversation with significant appreciation and significant expectations attached.
The financial reward is great, but if you treat it personally, you will also engender genuine motivation and loyalty.
Motivating without Money
To learn more about how to use non-financial motivators join my upcoming
FREE Webinar: Motivating Without Money.
I’ll share some great stories about what really works (and what really pisses people off)
It’s Wednesday, Aug 25.
You can register here.
