Workplace 101: A Profiles Global Business Blog

Part 2 - Author: Scheherazade Perkins, M.A.

In part one of this blog series, I outlined how managers need to get creative about motivating their employees without dangling the dollar in front of them. For many organizations, this is not a choice. Constrained budgets and resources mean leaders NEED to find other ways of motivating their staff.

I also promised to share with you ten traits of highly self-motivating people. Gail Cohen, lecturer, consultant, and author compiled a list of attributes that typify self-motivated individuals.

Author: Steve Deighton

Executives and managers pay attention: your words and actions significantly impact your employees! Every person desires to be valued. This is a key motivator for employees, and one that can be quickly dampened when a careless manager or executive causes the employee to feel that they are not valued.

It only takes one boss doing or saying one thing to cause an employee to move from highly engaged to very disengaged in a microsecond! There has never been a more important time than now to keep your employees engaged.

Thanksgiving is finally here!

In addition to eating turkey and spending time with family, Thanksgiving is a great time to express appreciation to people who deserve it. To find these people, look no further than your employees.

If you know your employees have consistently worked hard and gone above and beyond their job duties to help make your organization successful, now is a great time to recognize their efforts. Simply saying “thank you” is a nice gesture but it should happen on a regular basis. The holiday season calls for a new approach. Open the slideshow to see four creative ways to show your employees that you appreciate them.

We get up and go to work every day for a paycheck, right? Maybe not. Recent research from Salesforce.com found that it is not always all about the money when it comes to careers.  Nearly 80 percent of employees said that recognition in their careers is a more important motivator.

According to recent research from US News and World Report, older Americans seem to be happier at work than their younger coworkers. Surprised? Well, a survey conducted by Charles Schwab found that 32 percent of 60-something-year-old workers didn’t want to retire and 76 percent said they were “sticking to their jobs because they wanted to.” It was also found that 50-somethings are more likely than 60-somethings to say they feel "stuck" in their jobs and report that they are still working for financial reasons, not personal satisfaction. So why are older workers staying at their jobs? Because they are satisfied and happy at work!

Do you know what is important to your prospective and current employees? Do you work hard to meet those needs? If you answered yes to both questions, then you probably have a low employee turnover rate. However, this is not the case for all employers and many companies struggle with the issue of employee turnover.

Do your rewards provide the proper employee motivation?

Recognition, incentives, and other rewards are supposed to drive employee motivation. When they work as planned, they provide opportunities for organizations to honor outstanding performance and achievements while reminding everyone what the company values. But if left unchecked, reward programs can also miss the mark, costing the company money and wasted effort while failing to motivate as intended.