Breakfast Club
Philadelphia: The Next Frontier for Learning and Development
Mar 18, 2010 07:30 am
Four Seasons Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Webinars
Improving Emotional Intelligence Through Behavioral Style
Mar 18, 2010

CLO Symposiums
The Networked Organization: Leading Learning in the New Economy
Apr 12, 2010 - Apr 14, 2010
Boca Raton Resort & Club
Boca Raton, Florida

See More Events

Industry News

How to Motivate Employees to Do More With Less

Print this Article  Email this Article

Boston — Feb. 11
With leaner workforces, slower sales and tighter budgets, managers and executives need to motivate their employees to do more with less, according to Suzanne Bates, author of the newly published book, Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act!

“Monetary incentives such as raises and bonuses are in short supply,” Bates said. “Managers and executives must find non-monetary ways to keep their teams motivated, and to inspire them to achieve goals and objectives with fewer people and less funding. This makes it even more important for leaders to be out in front of employees as much as possible, continually communicating and making personal connections with them,”

Bates is president and CEO of Bates Communications.

Among the ways managers and executives can lead their teams to do more with less are:

• Praise, reward and recognize. “People really don’t mind working hard; they just want to know that their efforts are appreciated,” Bates said. “Recognition doesn’t have to be through raises and bonuses.”
• Communicate constantly. “In times like these, many managers tend to withdraw because they aren’t getting clear direction from their own bosses,” Bates said. “Fear grows in a vacuum, and employees will fill that vacuum of information with their own worries about their future.”
• Be open and honest with employees.
• Adopt a variety of ways to find out what is on employees’ minds. “It will require using several different approaches to dig deep and discover how employees are feeling,” Bates said.
• Give employees an opportunity to vent about such issues as layoffs, increased workloads, salary freezes and other cutbacks.
• Don’t be afraid to push your employees to take more initiative and become more involved.
• Get clear about your own priorities. “Managers often hear that they need to communicate their priorities,” Bates said. “But they can’t communicate these if they haven’t decided what they are. Leaders need to make the tough decisions about what really needs to be done now, and what isn’t as urgent and can wait longer.”
• Reassess day-to-day, even hour-to-hour. “What seemed important yesterday may not be so important today,” Bates said. “Although your priorities must be based on a sound business strategy, you need to continually reassess them, and help your team make good decisions about where to spend their time and resources.”
• Get in closer touch with customers, prospects and vendors.

March 2010
Five Innovative Online Courses
by Brandon Hall

Make the most of e-learning

March 2010
Securing the Future
by Fred Harburg

Lessons from an educational innovator

March 2010
The Right Feedback
by Bob Mosher

Leverage your untapped resources

Case Study

March 2010
Health Care Learning for the Next Generation
by Bill Perry

With a collaborative, networked learning system in place, NextGen cures health care providers’ hesitancy to innovate.

Business Intelligence

March 2010
Talent Management as Survival Skill
by Cushing Anderson

Talent management emerged from the recession relatively unscathed, and many CLOs see it as the way up and out of the economic downturn.

Profile

March 2010
Special Delivery: Learning at UPS
by Daniel Margolis

Anne Schwartz delivers a workforce that is the complete package via a philosophy of experiential rotation and a strong emphasis on simulations.