Employee Motivation

Employee motivation is the topic on which there is a lot of research taking place in organizations. HR policies and procedures in an organization are framed to motivate and keep the 'doers' among the employees happy while at the same time forcing the non-performers to perform or be shown the door.

The reason why I chose this topic is because of my interest in the field of employee motivation and if you as the reader is interested in this field then you should continue reading this article.

What motivates employees?

Well this is a pretty tricky question to answer and there are no real magic potions to keep employees motivated and engaged all the time. There are many ways to keep employees motivated like promoting the employees, giving them pay hikes, aligning employee goal with organization goals, recognizing their efforts and providing them cash or non-cash incentives. The topic of discussion here is how cash or non-cash incentives would help motivate employees

Cash incentives -Reward your deserving employees. Cash incentive is the most sought after reward by employees especially by those in need of additional cash besides their salary. Keep your employees posted about the amount involved as cash incentive as it would really motivate them to do well. However, the downside to cash incentive is that it may not be really motivating if the amount involved is small, people may feel entitled to it and it may not have a lasting value when compared to non-cash incentives like merchandize or travel that is mostly remembered.

Non-cash incentives - There are times when employees seek out non-cash incentives for their performance. Non-cash incentives can be in the form of points awarded for achieving specific targets, cash vouchers for purchases, special allowances for lunch or for traveling and surprise gifts etc. The downside to non-cash incentives is employees may not be really interested in the incentive that is offered and that may affect their performance.

Therefore carefully choose the right type of incentive to be given. Provide the right kind of incentive at the right time. For example, providing non-cash incentives on successful completion of a project and cash incentives for higher productivity would motivate the employees.

Periodic appraisals and subsequent increments would help you retain your employees but to motivate and keep your employees a combination of cash and non-cash incentives would do the trick.