Employee motivation is one of the tough tasks for many leaders.

Motivation

strategies are important as motivated employees play a very crucial role in the

organization’s success. Their engagement and determination lead to increased productivity

and performance. A higher level of employee engagement is often linked to a high level of

employee motivation. To develop a motivation strategy, it is important to know that some

employees are motivated by factors in the external environment such as pay, company

policies, or supervision (extrinsic motivation), while others are self-motivated (intrinsic

motivation). Considering these points, I propose a separate set of motivation strategies for

the analytics team, the sales team and to promote employee well-being.

The roles and responsibilities of the analytics team mainly consist of collection of

data, analyzing and interpreting the data to provide solutions to different departments,

developing analytics models, and so on. However, the analytics team of this company

spends the majority of their time inputting data into spreadsheets. To motivate employees

for improving efficiency, the company should focus on reducing manual work through

automating this task. In addition, the company can highlight how important their work is for

the other departments. For instance, the senior management can highlight that the

marketing department is dependent on the analytics team to form the progressive

marketing strategy. When the team members are made aware of their contributions, it

would give them renewed sense of purpose and thereby improve their engagement. Lastly,

the company can also add team challenges to make the work more exciting. During my

previous engagements, one of the challenges I designed was wherein every employee was

assigned a character name and scores on achieving specific targets. The scores were

updated periodically and the scoreboard was made accessible to all. This promoted
transparency and competition among employees and they were motivated to give in their

best. Rewarding the winners will maximize motivation.

As for the sales team, since their compensation heavily relies on commissions, it is

extremely important to set realistic and fair targets. If the sales targets are too aggressive,

the team members can feel stressed and demotivated. The company should also facilitate

sales training that will enable employees to close sales successfully. This will lead to

enhanced employee engagement. Lastly, the senior management should closely monitor the

team’s work and provide feedback and encouragement wherever necessary. Short sessions

rather than formal meetings are always better to provide quick feedback. This will facilitate

communication of the company’s expectations and will allow the team members to rework

their strategies if required.

The company should authentically care for its employees. In this competitive

environment, merely paying the salary is no longer sufficient. One of the leading hotel

company that I know has adopted the ‘Take Care Initiative’ for its employees’ well-being.

Through this initiative, the company ensures its team members are active, engaged, and

productive. They also offer coaching on various topics such as career developing, developing

a healthy lifestyle, and sharing the passion for community services. I will recommend the

senior management to undertake similar activities such as Step on challenges or weekly

Yoga/Zumba sessions.

Employee motivation is an ongoing process. My above recommendations to the

company are after considering intrinsic and extrinsic theories of motivation. A reward is the

most powerful factor of motivation. Lastly, the company should focus on employee well-

being.