Business is a great word. If it wasn’t for the definition behind it, today’s world would have, most likely, been a place of anarchy and rampage and people, if not already dead, would have been stuck at the stone era of their development. However, trading, exchanging, farming, and other walks of life helped human beings widen their perspective of communication and work, so now, managers, baffled, yet caring, are trying to find out what is it that can be done to improve the performance of employees and motivate them so they would always want to work for the best – us!
Today, there are probably millions of strategies to reward employees, however it is not the quantity, they say, but the quality that should count. Most of the articles online appear to be, either absolutely mirroring others or just plain naïve, with common knowledge in them. Sometimes - even less. Bogus websites with layouts looking like those from the mid nineties hosted under funny domains like “motive-your-peopleZ” dot org offer to help new and inexperienced managers to do less (and, in most of the cases, pay a little) to make their workers happy. As to whether those sites should be taken down - probably not since if one believes what they say, he or she, most likely, wouldn’t need the contents soon, anyway.
Apart from those “wonder” sites that “fix” one’s business in just a few days, there is quite a lot of useful information that could help one in motivating and organizing their workers. A recent study showed that most of the employees, about 90%, to be precise, prefer to be given challenging and interesting tasks, even rather than financial rewards. After that, the second most important thing was the chance for the workers to develop and improve themselves. Many of the workers would be eager to quit their current jobs if they had the opportunity to go to another one that gives them the chance to develop their skills. For example, many companies, such as Morgan Lewis and O’Melveney & Meyers realize the importance of that and schedule courses for their new partners. A brief or not-that-brief course of business development or leadership could boost the worker’s motivation quite a lot. From the study, conducted by Development Dimensions International (DDI) and the Human Capital Institute (HCI), 72 percent guessed that there would be improvements in the investing of the development of their employees, as they realize how crucial this matter is. 
Reed Smith was probably one of the first companies that realized the vital role of training, so they created Reed Smith University. In it, they train and teach new partners in development of business, computer science, and law. As time goes by, they are planning to expand it even further.
Fiona McGregor, head of HR of Madame Tussauds had come up with some ideas that help new employees, not only get to know the working environment, but also have fun and get motivated while doing it. She, together with her team, had created an interactive quiz which is taken by new workers along with already working ones. This has proven to have quite an effect on both learning about the company and the job and getting to know the colleagues. This is part of the one and a half day introduction program, called “Creating The Magic”.
Corporate training, of course, is not the only way to motivate employees. A great way of doing this is by the simple, old as the world, recognition. “People want to know that their hard work hasn't gone unnoticed.” (Messmer, 2007). When employees are told that their well done job is appreciated, this would raise their spirits and make them switch to a can-do setting. It is preferable that when being praised, employees are told in detail why instead of a meaningless generalization. This would show them that their superior is actually paying attention to their job and work in the company. It is believed that even if the boss can not be present, leaving a voice mail would almost have the same effect.
Another way of recognition could be done by using for example, modern internet methods of communication, such as virtual bulletin boards. There is plenty of free software which could be installed on an intranet server and set up with different sub forums in which employees can talk about things. One if this sub forums could be entitled “Achievements of Employees”, for example, in which the boss, or somebody else from the top managers, could write names of employees who had done well, what have they done, and how did that made them go in that forum.
It has another benefit; the forum is a tool of information flow. Employees do not want to be neglected and not told all that is crucial and important. Usually, the bigger the company, the harder the open communication, as there are quite a lot of levels and data seems to get lost. However, regular staff meetings, for example, once a week, tend to improve the employees’ motivation as they become informed and realize easier the part they are taking in the organization. Workers also need to be told exactly what segment of the big machine they are, precisely what their work is helping for. This way they would have a much more crystal vision of their own mission. Having done that, top managers could also include staff at taking, or what appears to be taking, decisions about important things, for example, merging of offices, transferring workers, and so and so far. This would show the staff that their saying is important which would make them more confident in giving their own opinion, thus making them more motivated because they are valued. Small symbols can also have quite an effect on employees like, for example, keeping the office door open or body language, including smiling, not crossing hands and so on.
As noted above, employees prefer challenging assignments. If such are given more often to the best employees, they would consider themselves very useful and productive. However, just challenges wouldn’t be that effective. If a worker manages to complete and even exceed what is expected of them and get rewarded with more authority and personal recognition from their supervisor, this would boost their loyalty and motivation, because this shows in one of the best ways that the one “above” them believes in their skills and talent. Such recognition, of course, can be done in a quite more official way in the form of promotion. The advantage of it is that other employees would see that the boss is not reluctant to award the best employees.
There are good ways of motivating employees outside their working frames, though. Events outside the office are quite good motivators. When done frequently, they give the opportunity to employees to get to know each other better, talk on non business-related topics and this way - be happier when go back to the office. Employees tend to work better when they are friends with each other.
Another great way of rewarding and motivating employees is by letting them experience something they will hardly forget. There are a lot of companies in Europe and USA that offer not-that-expensive trips to exotic places. A trip with a hot-air balloon or on a small tropical island could and would leave a print in the employee’s memory for life. When given such an experience the worker would most likely be a bit more loyal to their bosses. What is a major advantage of this motivation system is that, firstly, the worker is quite surprised that he or she has the real opportunity to be at that place. Second, the thought of being there would give the worker the motivation to perform better in order to be able to cover what is needed for winning the award. The employee who wins this “prize” would most definitely have a lasting memory which, of course, would be his or her motivator for the next year’s “competition”. Another benefit for this rewarding method is that the employee who won last time would be eager to tell his or her colleagues about it, this way motivating them to improve their performance.
A financial services company operated such an incentive in 2003. The awards it was giving were, for the top performers – a large travel voucher and for employees who had overdone preset objectives – some smaller presents. Sales almost went two times up, during the performance of the game. This was a major development for that company.
The major disadvantages of this type of rewarding are not much but are quite “scary” for the top managers and owners. It is believed that one or a group of employees could be the winners every time such incentive is played. However, companies who perform games like this, advocate the thesis that rules can disallow such phenomena. Other disadvantage is the so called “sandboxing” period. Once the game is over, there would be expectations from the employees that the game would start again and once this being confirmed, it is believed that the workers won’t do their jobs as motivated until the incentive starts over. However, the study stated above shows that during the “sandboxing” period the sales of the financial company remained higher than the baseline ones.
This incentive, of course, is quite expensive and is appropriate for bigger companies. “The incremental sales margin was $180,000, compared to the incentive program's cost of $164,000”( Tedesco, 2007). Smaller companies, however, can use incentives to motivate and award their staff, too. Fiona McGregor had created an incentive for its employees called “Change the Carrot” where employees have to keep a carrot fresh, which, according to her “helps to keep up healthy internal competition so that employees strive to exceed customer expectations” (McGregor as cited in Oomph by the bucketload!, 2007). She also had created a game, called “Magic Miles” in which employees can nominate each other when they believe the other has done something good. Their benefit of this is that they build up miles which they can exchange for certain coupons and vouchers. McGregor has created an Employee of the Year competition, whose winner of 2007 got a car. The ones who were close to the first place but didn’t win had the chance to take part in a classical American game during the Christmas party.
A relatively new incentive by Marc and Jeff Slutsky describes a game quite suitable for retailers, called “Street Fighter”. In it, employees are given each a set of cards giving certain discounts at the shop they work for. Their goal is to give away those cards to friends and family and the one who gives away the most is the winner. The cards have place for the employee’s name and signature in order for the tracking to be possible. Another reason is the fact that workers feel more important when they have to sign on something in order for it to be valid. Once the game has started, the top manager could keep track on the rankings in order to motivate those who are below to go up. 
Prizes could be given weekly and there should be one grand prize at the end of the incentive, however smaller awards should be given to all the participants.
There are, of course, other techniques of motivation that are probably not suitable for all sorts of businesses, because they don’t fit into the category of “serious” motivational techniques. For example, there are some companies who perform events such as “Lunch with the Boss”, where the best employee for a certain period of time gets to have a launch with their boss, or employee car wash, where managers wash the best employees’ cars. Some bosses let workers go home earlier on Fridays, or let them wear casual clothes that day, others print “You’ve Done Good” “awards” that employees can put on their walls. There are companies in which workers can sign up for courses that are not related to the work they perform, for example, gardening or skiing. A commonly used campaign in the companies in USA is the “Plant a Tree” campaign in which in honor of every good employee a tree is being planted. There are other small, more of a symbols, techniques like dedication of a song on the local radio, singing telegrams to say “Good Job”, post-holiday parties or even holidays and so on – all of which even with not much boost workers’ motivation, or if not, at least their happiness, which, after all, is just as important.
Another perspective shows that motivation should not only by positive as those, listed above. There are negative factors that could boost one’s performance and loyalty, too. For example, some people run in the park not because they strive to be healthy, but because they fear to be the sick, others always get involved in short relationships not because it is “cool” or “fashionable”, but because they fear to open themselves to other people. These, in this case, hidden fears play the role of motivators just as good as any other “positive” ones.
In order for these motivational tools to be effective, however, managers should know how to use them. Most, if not all, modern companies wouldn’t take the shouting and threats as a motivational tool, since fear works for a short period of time. Being shouted on three times for the last month, an employee would not hesitate to leave or at least work less after the fourth shouting. Managers should do their best to learn ways of motivation, not dictatorship. The most common reasons for leaders to lack the habit of asking their staff for their motivational needs are not that much. With not much doubt, the top two reasons are that managers are so busy with work that they simply don’t have the time to ask each employee about his or her needs or because the leaders believe that all workers are motivated by the same thing (or only money). Some bosses believe that is up to the workers to motivate themselves, while others hope that if they ignore the problem it will go away by itself. 
Sometimes managers are afraid to ask their employees because they think the latter might want additional resources, or because, as their bosses, they might be part of the problem, or simply because they don’t know how to ask the question. There are, of course, exceptions in which the employee doesn’t know about his or her needs and no one could help him or her, but the chances of a whole corporation to be consistent only of such is rather impossible.
Cut the long story short, there are plenty of techniques to motivate employees, make them happy, boost their loyalty, and so on. As long as one is ambitious, they could find tons of useful information and advices in Internet, special books and magazines or by people who had already walked that path. On the other hand, if a leader does not have the charisma, intelligence and tools of communication needed, the whole process of motivation can take the wrong turn and collapse. Managers without such qualities, though, are highly unlikely to keep their position as such for a long time. “An employee's motivation is a direct result of the sum of interactions with his or her manager.” once said Bob Nelson, an American author. It is up the boss to learn how to make his employee happy not vice versa.
