Your behaviour is one of the strongest influencers of the attitude and motivation of your people. It is absolutely critical, therefore, that you are committed and motivated yourself.

• Behave better than you would expect your best employee to behave.
• You don’t own your employees, so recognise that they have an important life outside work.
• Treat people as individuals and make allowances for their differences.
• Encourage team work and co-operation: bring your people together, talk to them as a team, encourage people to get involved in each other’s jobs.
• Be consistent; don’t have favourites. Don’t allow relationships outside work to affect work.
• Don’t encourage employees to talk about each other to you.
• Never make promises you can’t keep.

Remember that we are all at our most effective when we enjoy work:

• Review the content of each person's job regularly.
• Give responsibility by allowing decisions to be made at the most junior level possible.
• Routine and repetition is boring, reduces concentration levels and increases the incidence of mistakes. Find ways to vary the methods, sequence and pace of work.
• Move away from individuals working on one small part of a process to teams working together on the whole process.
• Control is a motivator – allow people as much control as possible over the way in which they do their jobs.
• Consider giving people different jobs for a while, or broadening the scope of their existing job.

Provide the best working environment that you can. Providing up to date equipment, good facilities and nice surroundings can be a sound investment. Try to avoid signaling that some employees are more important than others eg different car parking arrangements, segregated eating areas. Allow people control over their own environment and the freedom to make decisions that affect them.

Manage by objectives which are specific, agreed and measurable eg we are going to increase sales by 5% in Quarter 2. Measure everyone’s contribution and help people to measure their own performance. People like to see how well they’re doing. Set high standards that make people ‘stretch’ – challenge is a big motivator. Meet regularly to discuss individuals’ progress against their objectives.

Employees will take an interest in the business if they know what’s going on:

• Keep them informed about what’s going on, how the business is doing, what the plans are.
• Involve employees in planning and innovations. This is highly motivating for most. Involvement in decisions recognises an individual’s value.
• Hold regular meetings with individuals and teams and make meetings a positive experience. They should be a vehicle for two-way communication and problems raised should be addressed.

Pay people fairly and competitively and link financial rewards to individual performance whenever possible. Use incentives and bonuses wisely, to encourage and reward superior performance.

Non-financial reward can be equally powerful: recognition from management can, for example, be a real motivator. Other factors include:

• Being appreciated publicly eg an individual’s success recognised at a meeting or in a newsletter.
• Being asked to participate in special projects, as a recognition of an employee’s contribution.
• A clear career development path, where promotion is seen as a reward for outstanding performance (as well as the capability or potential to do the next job).

Show your appreciation. A simple ‘thank you’ is often underestimated.

• communication
• delegation
• appraisal
• managing the psychological contract