Increasing productivity in employees can be motivated but many motivation or rewards strategies have long-term problems. Great solutions can be found in the Principles of Influence and behavioural science that are costless to implement.

Behavioral Science often offers cost-effective alternatives that are effective and genuine. Here we discuss a the perfect example on how Employee Productivity can be boosted with little to no costs.

what reward structures to use for employees?

Reward structures in the workplace have been around for a long time but they do have the potential to backfire. Some common examples are:

• Rewarding employees that perform better with financial rewards
• Inclusion of employees on a profit share program
• Awarding desirable gifts to top performers, like phones, weekends away, holidays, watches, pens or lunch with the boss

The problem is that once rewards are expected, it is hard to reduce or back out of them without a reduction in employee motivation.

The science of persuasion offers a great alternative.

SIX free effective employee production motivators

These SIX ‘free’ alternatives for employee motivation are costless to implement and make everyone involved feel good about their work. It hinges on the fact that when employees regularly experience the benefits that their work brings to others, this is very motivating for the employee. They are spurred on by their own enthusiasm.

Ethical motivators for employees that boost morale, could be:

• Start collecting genuine testimonials of customer’s positive experiences or outcomes after dealing with the company and have them specifically name the employee that assisted them.
• Display customer testimonials in places where employees and (potential) clients can read them.
• Make employees aware of testimonials that involved them.
• Start a staff meeting by reading out a testimonial from a client, about a job well done.
• Let employees pick their own favourite client testimonial that involves them and let them read it out loud at weekly team meetings.
• Ask delighted customers if they wouldn’t mind to spur on the employees by having them read out their own testimonial during a staff meetings. This can now easily be done through video call also.

What other ideas can you come up with that involves employees beeing happily reminded of the positive outcome of their efforts? You can read more about SMALL BIG changes in Dr Cialdini’s book or learn all the ins and outs of Influence by doing a course.

Leave a comment below if you found this helpful or have additional ideas.

#employeeengagement #employeeappreciation #employeemotivation #persuasionskills #influence