The attitude of highly motivated employees is palpable and powerful. You can easily feel it as the defining attribute of organizations that are thriving and reaching their full potential. Motivated employees are self-driven, engaged, committed, and eager to go the extra mile.
They create a circle of goodwill that elevates morale, productivity, and overall performance. They maximize innovation, collaboration, well-being, service, and trust. This, in turn, strengthens employee and customer relationships and enhances an employer’s brand.
These are the candidates every employer wants, but they can’t be picked from a tree. The best employees choose to work for organizations that have intentionally and thoughtfully created cultures where people feel respected and appreciated. What attracts, retains, and motivates top talent more than anything else is a work environment where leaders put their people first before anything else.
What does it mean when you’re first? Think back to a time when someone put you first, above anything else happening at that moment. Maybe you were in a competition, and someone stopped to help you, risking their chance to win. Maybe a colleague silenced a room so your shy voice could be heard. Or perhaps your boss publicly recognized your behind-the-scenes efforts when no one else valued your contribution. These moments of being noticed, special, recognized, and appreciated are personal gifts to each of us. They make us happy, and they motivate us to be our best.
We understand this on a personal level. Too often, we don’t apply it on an organizational level. I believe that’s because we simply don’t know how. Putting people first is a commitment to building trusted relationships where everyone feels safe and valued. The commitment has to extend to leadership, culture, and treatment of individual employees in an integrated effort.
How to build a culture that motivates
Leaders must recognize they are not simply building an organization; they are creating a unique community that grows over time from the hard work of managing people with patience, persistence, fairness, and love. The stronger the sense of community, the more people want to contribute by performing at their best. Leaders can focus on these five areas to build or nurture motivation in their communities:
1. Make people-centered leadership the essential foundation of culture.
Being human-centric is highly teachable, and all leaders, managers, and supervisors should be trained to lead from this perspective. People-centered leaders feel empathy, passion, and concern for their people. They lead with their humanity first, building trusting relationships that empower others to be more authentic, kind, and attuned to feelings.
They:
- Tell the truth – like it is, not as they’d like it to be.
- Explain their why.
- Show high levels of competence and accountability that bring results.
- Build trust through empowerment – creating guidelines for things like employee decision-making and working remotely, plus always having employees’ backs.
- Listen attentively to everyone at all levels and welcome diverse opinions and perspectives (not letting feedback sit on a shelf, acting on it quickly).
- Encourage innovation – understanding that some ideas win, some fail.
- Cultivate for new talent continuously to avoid the risk of hiring people who don’t fit the culture, or burning out current employees because positions go unfilled. Use freelance workers to assist and support employees when needed.
- Understand it’s okay not to know everything or have all the answers.
- Embrace that they hire humans with all their complexities and relationships.
- Adopt new tools and technology to support employees in creating and improving products and services.
- Manage performance weekly, monthly, quarterly – or spur of the Moment – rather than annually. Prioritize safety, health, and well-being.
2. Health and well-being
- Allow people to work where they’re most comfortable and trust they’ll get the work done.
- Introduce stress-reducing programs.
- Extend employee sick leave and time off for family care.
- Connect employees with co-workers who share interests or family situations.
- Get employee input on when and how they’d like to return to work, and then get feedback on how well it worked.
3. Purpose/mission
- Communicate strategically to bring purpose to life across the organization, providing clarity, alignment, and motivation for employees to work toward shared objectives.
- Communicate purpose to support agile teams in dealing with ambiguity.
- Incorporate mission and purpose in business agility and change initiatives.
4. Learning, reflection, and transition
- Create a lifelong learning environment by providing professional development opportunities and upskilling, as well as encouraging people to look for growth horizontally, not just vertically.
- Empower teams to be curious and open-minded in their observations and activities without judgment.
- Model being humble when listening to new ideas and data and being willing to innovate constantly.
- Encourage sharing and comparing what’s been learned among teams to maintain a culture of collaboration.
5. Welcoming environment
- Consider the office furniture. Make it ergonomic and comfortable to prevent repetitive stress disorders and lower back pain.
- Create a brainstorming room with comfy seating to encourage creativity and connection.
- Add some greenery to boost the spirit and add art to blank walls and empty spaces.
- Break up maze-like small spaces into more open work areas.
- Everyone thrives with a focus on motivation.
- Employees feel valued and energized, and employers benefit from increased profitability.
- Leaders everywhere can begin creating motivated work environments by simply putting people first.
