How to motivate an employee?

  "When the owner wants the dog to follow the team, he gives the dog a 'treat.' The companies do the same with free lunch, sports club, additional insurance. When the measures stop working (and stop working, for example, the increase in salary, according to research, only encourages the employee for a couple of months), we have to look for a new "treat".

 

    Interestingly, all of this is still called employee motivation. It’s not motivation, it’s temptation and bribery. Which, of course, benefits the employee at least in the short term, but creates rather negative consequences in the labor market - demoralizes employees, reduces the competitiveness of companies and Lithuania as a global player.

 

    Rapidly rising wages are contributing to record inflation. The fact that wages already exceed the value created is becoming relevant and may lead to the bankruptcy of companies in certain sectors, especially those that depend on labor costs. In addition, employees have become accustomed to getting a higher salary without any effort - just for loyalty. And, in fact, employers are willing to pay for loyalty. We compete for who will offer a shorter work week. Great (for employees), but it means we increase business costs and create less products (values).

 

    When I stand by an employee and consider what else to do to get the job done, I forget the fact that it is I (more) motivated to get the job done and the employee is motivated to get an external “prize,” a benefit, rather than to  do the job itself.

 

    How much more do you want to bribe and seduce employees? Tired? It’s time to focus on the intrinsic motivation of employees. The real motivation of every person is internal - arising from internal needs, real interest in work - and it is not bought.

 

    So let’s formulate the question differently: how to motivate an employee correctly.

 

    Everyone has three important needs: to feel competent, to have autonomy and to feel connected to others. 

 

By meeting these needs of our employees, we encourage their intrinsic motivation. Consequently, we must help the employee to highlight his or her strengths, talents, anticipate the way of their development, employ competencies, allow the employee to experience success at work, balance the challenge. If an employee gets bored at work, he or she may not feel competent because he or she is not using his or her skills. If the challenge is too great, again, it feels insignificant, unable to cope with the goal, the task.

 

    Community is a team of professionals, another job bar for company executives. Can we be proud of every member of the team? Are the employees proud of each other and happy to work in this team?

 

    As leaders, we must strive for this: foster spirit, focus, set high standards of performance (“we don’t work any way”) and carefully select people into our team.

 

    Autonomy is the freedom to organize your working time, find the best way to achieve your goal, and make decisions. It is for the latter reason that managers are more satisfied with their work. So perhaps we can consider how we can give our employees more autonomy and decision-making freedom?

 

    If an employee employs his or her competencies, has the challenges to meet them, the freedom to make decisions, and a great team of professional colleagues, can anyone buy him or her with a few hundred euros, another day off, or health insurance?

 

    If the hygienic factors of work - remuneration, quality of management, working conditions - are appropriate, we do not need to tempt the employee. Let’s stop bribing our people. They deserve more - interesting and meaningful work that we can create together. "

 

This advice, like most of the ideas imported into Lithuania, is valid somewhere in America, in the Silicon Valley. In Lithuania, most employees, their managers and business owners are unable to perform more complex work. We compete for cheap labor. For decades, we’ve been making the same cheap furniture or something similar on the same cheap machines. Our salaries are brutally low, lagging behind the market. These theories are an attempt at demagoguery to still reap benefits of those low wages. It’s a desperate affair. Therefore, all of these beautiful theories do not apply to us.