Every CEO wants highly motivated workers who do their best every day — even when their manager isn't looking. But you can't just flick a switch to motivate your staff. Instead, as Anne Bruce writes in How to Motivate Every Employee: 24 proven tactics to spark productivity in the workplace, you must show your employees how their needs and desires relate to your company's goals in a way that benefits you both.
Her advice includes:
Have your staff brainstorm to improve their own jobs: Set up employee focus groups to suggest ways to make your staff's work more fulfilling. Aside from the useful ideas this will generate, their brainstorming will help you learn what your people want from their jobs. But don't forget to implement their good ideas, and to explain why you're not implementing the unworkable ones.
Explain how the business is run: Because you as the CEO see the big picture of your company, you may not grasp that most of your employees only know their own department well. If you show them how they fit into the firm as a whole, and the difference their work makes, they'll be able to do their work more intelligently. Tell them about the company's history to help establish a greater sense of pride and identity. Let them know your firm's mission, and encourage them to suggest ways they can help achieve it.
Talk money: Share your profit-and-loss statement with your employees, and explain how to interpret the numbers. Take time to analyze scenarios that show the impact one person has on the entire organization's bottom line, potential pay raises, bonuses, profit-sharing and so on.
Boost morale with inventive perks: Offer your staff extras with a bit of flair that will make them feel special. Bruce cites one firm that offers "wheels on loan" to employees whose car is in the shop, "you've got it maid" discounts on maid service and infant car seats to new parents. Another gives generous gifts to any employee who gets married, including limo service on their wedding day, $500 and a week of paid vacation. And a third offers staff a nap room with futons.
Tell new managers they'll be leading an exceptional team: Take advantage of the Pygmalion Effect, the tendency of people to live up to — or down to — what's expected of them. Employee performance improves greatly when new managers are told they'll be leading an exceptional group of high-potential workers. Because the managers then tend to treat these employees as if they're capable of superior performance, they usually deliver exactly that.