Whether businesses want to admit it or not, the level of motivation within their workforce will play a defining role in the overall success of that organisation.

Employee motivation is a pillar of employee performance – a driver that can determine whether an employee struggles to live up to their potential, or whether they provide outstanding results for the business. The level of motivation they have will impact what they can achieve. It will also help to shape the culture and atmosphere in a business, something that can’t be ignored in today’s working world.

Unmotivated employees can end up being complacent, unengaged, unproductive and generally have a detrimental effect on company culture and atmosphere.

So, if employee motivation is so important, what can businesses do to ensure their workforce is highly motivated?

What motivates employees?

A good way to get started with employee motivation, is to build a highly engaged workforce. Engaged employees are more motivated, committed, happier and better performing.

To build an engaged and motivated workforce, businesses must first understand what will motivate employees.

Our House of Engagement offers a visual resource into the key areas of working life that impact employee engagement. This model illustrates the relationship between a range of factors that affect employees’ attitudes and behaviour.

By using this framework, and applying it to staff surveys and research methods, you can start to learn about the driving forces keeping employees engaged and happy. This helps to showcase the most important aspects of working life related to your staff and supports the production of action plans to implement in order to see improvements in engagement levels.

Guesswork and assumptions are often ineffective when it comes to employee engagement and motivation and today’s businesses can’t afford to leave such an important element to chance. By taking the time to undertake well designed research to learn about how employees feel and what they desire, businesses can build meaningful and long-lasting relationships with their workforce.

Research tools such as employee engagement surveys, pulse surveys, interviews and focus groups, can all contribute to valuable insights that can be used to learn what truly motivates and drives individuals within the business.

Why are motivated employees so valuable?

Investing time and resources into understanding your employees better and what impacts their feelings towards certain tasks, people or challenges offers a multitude of benefits, including:

  • Improve employee retention

Happy, engaged and motivated employees are much less likely to leave than their counterparts. Hiring is a resource intensive process that can put businesses in risky situations. Bad hires and rushed recruiting can be costly, both in terms of financial resource and business reputation.

Businesses that enjoy high employee retention often benefit from being able to set and accomplish long-term goals as the workforce is largely unchanging. It also saves a lot of people and financial resource on training.

  • Improve employee performance

Those individuals that feel motivated and committed towards their employer are likely to perform to their highest level. Performance and output are highly likely to be impacted if an employee becomes unmotivated and uninspired with their working life.

Being able to gain insights into these drivers and motivators before an employee’s performance drops, can help to sustain a workforce that performs highly and productively.

  • Improve company culture

Employee motivation has an impact on attitude and behaviour. This will impact how an employee is perceived by those around them. If large proportions of the workforce are showing signs of being unmotivated, this can negatively impact those around them through ‘emotional contagion’. This can lead to a negative culture and atmosphere.

  • Improve employee wellbeing

It’s not just about business benefits when it comes to employee motivation. Motivated employees are likely to experience more self-esteem, wellbeing and positive feelings throughout their day.

As concerns about employee stress and anxiety grab the headlines, businesses who deliver an employee experience that celebrates and supports wellbeing, are likely to attract and retain the best talent in the industry.

Reporting on employee engagement and motivation

To help our clients get the most out of research into employee engagement, wellbeing and motivation, we analyse your survey results to find out which factors of working life are most linked to levels of engagement among your staff. This means you can monitor and influence key factors that will have meaningful impacts on engagement, well-being and motivation.

We create reports that are easy to understand and help translate a lot of quantitative and qualitative data into bite-size chunks that will yield meaningful results.

Getting started with Edgecumbe surveys

Our team here at Edgecumbe Surveys are highly experienced in the areas of business psychology, research methods, analytics and project management. This means we are perfectly positioned to help our clients to effectively measure and improve their employee engagement. Through this process, we can ensure your employees become more engaged, motivated and committed, helping boost performance and overall success.

We make the survey process simple, quick and easy so that you can focus on making the improvements that will help your company succeed.

To learn more, contact us today.