by Leigh Goessl

Created on: January 02, 2010   Last Updated: April 11, 2010

Employees that do a good job are valuable assets to any business. Employees who are motivated typically have strong morale and this is beneficial for the entire organization. Motivated employees also typically work meticulously to ensure work is completed professionally and with high quality.

Staff members who are not motivated are more likely to perform carelessly, produce sloppy work, not do their work with pride and/or influence the overall work environment and laden the

atmosphere with negativity. 

To understand what motivates employees to do a good job it is important to get to know employees individually. It is vital for a manager to not just group staff members all into a collective unit and assume they respond to the same motivators. The reason for this is because motivation for individual employees can mean different things.

What motivates one employee may not inspire another to do a good job. This is why it is so important to gain strong insight into what makes individual employees want to succeed and be inspired in their jobs.

Here are some of the common motivators that inspire staff members to do a good job:

*Rewards

There are two kinds of rewards managers can use to motivate employees, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. While each is a type of reward, the kinds of incentives offered vastly differ and it is important to correctly identity which employees will respond to each type. If not, the outcome may not be the ones desired that results in employee motivation.

>Intrinsic Rewards

These rewards are achieved through task performance. While there is no tangible or measurable payment in intrinsic rewards, the motivation levels can soar with the right reward approach.

One of the key ideas in intrinsic rewards are to offer a feeling of accomplishment and achievement; many staff members often will respond very favorably to being given levels of autonomy and a sense of empowerment. This can come about in many ways, including but not limited to, more responsibility, redesigned jobs, or varying of a work schedule; basically any kind of innovative way to make work more interesting.

When motivating employees to do a good job it is important to provide frequent feedback through positive reinforcement and not negative criticism. In addition, managers can offer growth on the promotion scale either through actual promotion or simply offering more responsibility. Many employees thrive at the chance to try something new or take charge of an area of the business.

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