What are The 4 Types of Employee Motivation and How to Leverage Them - TEAMSPIRE (2023)

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Introduction

Here’s a puzzle for you: why do some employees work harder and some other highly talented employees don’t seem to perform so well?

Your answer is correct: motivation. If an employee is sufficiently motivated, he/she will go the extra mile. On the other hand, an absolutely gifted employee with poor motivation level may not even do the bare minimum!

Here’s a bigger puzzle: how to make all the employees highly motivatedso that all of them can perform better?

This needs a bit of in-depth understanding of different types of employee motivation and how it works.

More importantly, if you can spend a bit of time and energy to study the different types of employee motivation, you can identify which types you practice and which ones you need to introduce or improve upon.

Here’re the four types of employee motivation and how you can leverage them for your clinic:

#1. Intrinsic Motivation

Most employers tend to think that money moves people. But there’s no greater myth.

Think of designers and other artists who choose a career not based on the financial rewards but based on the intrinsic motivation to express their creativity.

The same applies to your employees.

You need to fuel their intrinsic motivation to enable them to perform at their peak.

Here’s how you can devise ways to ignite intrinsic motivation among your staff:

• Challenges: Give them new challenges from time to time. Create scenarios which challenge their creativity and problem-solving skills. Tell them that you believe that they can do it. Employees who cannot find anything challenging at workplace, get bored and become de-motivated and disengaged.

• Constructive Feedback: You may be afraid of sharing honest and constructive feedback with your employees but you are in for a surprise. They may surprise you by the way they receive it. Their intrinsic motivation propels them to keep improving their abilities. Your feedback can help them grow. Employees who keep growing will remain highly motivated and look forward to working harder.

• Learning Opportunities: if you want your employees to remain excited about their work and keep improving, you need to continuously provide opportunities to learn new skills and attributes. If you enroll them in Teamspire, it will be just what the doctor ordered! Teamspire can provide constant inputs and offer new insights for their urge for lifelong learning.

• Let them take ownership: Stop micromanaging. Artists do their best work when they are absolutely into it. If somebody else is looking over their shoulders, they don’t perform well. The same applies to your staff. Let them take ownership of their work and you provide the necessary space for them to work in their own way.

#2. Extrinsic Motivation

Like intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation also has a vital role to play.

It basically means more visible, concrete and tangible triggers to motivate your employees. The art however is to use the triggers of extrinsic motivation selectively and wisely.

Some dermatologists overdo it and some ignore it completely. The beauty lies in its strategic use to motivate the employees.

Wondering how to use it effectively?

Here’s your roadmap to understand and implement mechanisms of extrinsic motivation:

• Monetary rewards: Most people are divided on this. Some people think that money is the prime mover of human motivation and overdo it. They are disappointed when it does not make the employees more creative and innovative. It is necessary to understand its relationship with motivation. It does not transform an employee overnight and make him/her absolutely creative. It simply serves to put the employee at ease that you value his/her contribution. It also serves to make him/her stress-free about his/her financial situation. If your employee is all the time worried about his/her finances, how can he/she be motivated and engaged? So it makes the employee comfortable and stress-free so that he/she can work on the given task.

• Appreciation, Recognition and Gratitude: Appreciation and recognition instantly transform an employee’s attitude. It triggers a sense of fulfillment of the work done. It also sets the tone and pace for the next tasks that he/she undertakes. It would be a great idea to show your gratitude if an employee goes an extra mile to make things happen. It sort of ensures a repeat performance!

• Set Clear Expectations: Whatever your expectations may be, you should express it in clear words. If possible, give it in writing. When you make things black and white, it serves to align an employee to your scheme of things. Once expectations are clear, employees can work towards achieving them and it makes them motivated to achieve concrete and tangible goals.

• Define “Achievement”: Most employers expect employees to achieve great results but never define it for them as to what they call “achievement”. You need to define whether ‘completion’ of a task is enough or you are looking for purity of the process. You need to define whether ‘quality’ of the work done is achievement or ‘patient satisfaction’ qualifies as achievement of the task. Define “done” and uphold it under any circumstances. It motivates employees to focus on something and achieve it.

• External rewards also work as well as intrinsic motivation triggers. It’s merely a question of understanding which extrinsic triggers work in which way and to what purpose. Then you can apply it to boost the motivation of your staff.

You may also like –8 Powerful Motivation Triggers to Transform Your Diverse Employees

#3. Personal Motivation

Employee-employer relationship is generally listener-speaker relationship. Employer speaks and the employee listens. The employer is interested in merely giving instructions regarding work and the employee has to merely listen and act upon the instructions given.

Well, nothing wrong with this, except that every employee is human enough to have a few things that motivate them at the personal level.

We tend to ignore those things for one or the other reasons and miss out on those triggers which move an employee at a personal level.

Not convinced?

Here’s how it works:

• Talk to them about their goals: Learning about what your employees wish to do enlightens you about what they are interested in, what they would like to work upon and how you can utilize their expertise. If you take interest in their goals, they will feel a sense of belongingness and an instant connect with you. Once that happens, it is also easy for them to be motivated enough to carry out any task you assign.

• Talk to them more often: Most of the time you may be so busy so there’s no time to have a good conversation with your employees. If you have observed, your employees would not leave your chamber until you clearly signal that the conversation is over. They love talking to you but you are busy. But most of the time, you talk at them, not talk to Having a one-on-one conversation more often boosts their motivation and engagement.

• Focus on their family: Most employees work hard to earn not just for themselves but also for their families. If you care about their families, they will feel cared for. If you take interest in their family and ask for their parents’ health or child’s education, it makes them feel that you have a genuine concern for them. This makes them feel like they belong to you and your clinic. The idea that your clinic staff is one big family is something that needs to be practiced!

• Create a career path for them: Like you are looking for the growth of your clinic, your employees too wish to grow in their careers. However, building a career is an art. At times, it may not be clear to them how they can build and strengthen their careers. You can extend your help and guidance regarding how their careers can be charted. You can enroll them in Teamspire and build their life and soft skills necessary for growth in this field. Teamspire can provide constant input as far as employee motivation and professional development are concerned.

#4. Peer Motivation

A significant part of the employee motivation depends on working with others.

If you could create a culture that provides great opportunities for working in a team, it will help your employees become more motivated. It will help them rise over personal likes and dislikes and put the team first.

When they put the team first, it’s easy for them to give their best possible efforts for the team success.

But it does not happen on its own; you need to consciously work in this direction.

Here’s how you can channelize efforts in the direction of peer motivation:

• Make sure you don’t let them work alone. Let them work in a team and build a great bonding. More than you can motivate them, the team leader and members can do the trick!

• Collaboration brings the best out of us. When your employees collaborate, they start looking at different perspectives and learn about the strengths of one another. When they become aware of this, they can complement each other in their work. It would be great fun for them to work together. This builds their motivation to work harder and work more sincerely.

• Promote healthy competition. Let them have a little healthy competition in the way different teams work. It will make them further motivated to perform better than others.

• Offer conflict mediation and resolution. At times, there is a conflict or disagreement among employees that need to be amicably resolved. Most of the times, nobody does anything about it and it is expected that it will subside on its own. It does not go away on its own and leads to bitterness. Such bitterness de-motivates employees and they cannot work together. Therefore, you should put in place a mechanism for conflict resolution at your clinic.

• Involve them in different tasks. Departmental boundaries are good but it is also necessary to expose them to different aspects of your clinic. Let them be involved once in a while in the activities of different departments and contribute their inputs. It enables them to have a new experience, get to know their colleagues and learn new skills. All of these are integral to employee motivation.

Summing Up

While every employer practices some or the other form of employee motivation measures, the question, however, is to make it systematic and comprehensive.

To stand out from the rest, you can imbibe and internalize these four types of employee motivation and accordingly work out the mechanisms and processes to boost employee motivation for your staff.

If you integrate these four types in the way you practice employee motivation at your clinic and align your employee policies to these four types, you can leverage the power of motivation and enhance their engagement and productivity.

The knowledge of these four types and the roadmap to implement it will give you the necessary competitive advantage to accelerate the growth of your clinic and practice!

Parting Thoughts

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Infographic – What are The 4 Types of Employee Motivation and How to Leverage Them