As well as using money to motivate a workforce, businesses can also apply a number of non-financial methods;
– Delegation: this is when management gives a certain level of authority down the hierarchy.
– Empowerment: management gives their subordinates a certain degree of power and autonomy over their own work.
– Job enlargement: the number of tasks for a role are increased thereby providing employees with more skills for their job.
– Job enrichment: employees are given more responsibilities and chances to use their own initiative and creativity.
– Job rotation: in order to increase variety, employees get to carry out different tasks within their role.
– Quality circles: gives employees an opportunity to have a say in how the business should be run and the role of implementing and monitoring any changes.
– Teamworking: employees work together to create a product or provide a service. Each employee has their own role within the team, like in cell production.
– Work participation: employees are invited to be part of the decision-making process and asked for their ideas and opinions.
– Work council: a number of employees make up the work council. It holds regular meetings with the managers in which issues concerning processes and procedures are discussed.
– Worker-director: this is a workforce representative who takes part in board director meetings. They’re not so common in the UK as it’s believed that they slow down the decision-making process and the worker-director could leak confidential information to the rest of the workforce.
If a workforce is demotivated the symptoms tend to be:
– high labour turnover
– high absenteeism
– bad timekeeping
– large waste rates
– bad quality output
– high cases of disciplinary issues
If a business is finding that its workforce is suffering from a lack of motivation then management should take the following steps:
– cultivate a good corporate culture
– make sure that all level of pay are fair
– make the jobs more challenging
– involve lower levels of the organisation in the decision-making process
– make sure that recognition is given for good work and achievements
– make sure that the business contains a good communication flow