What are various factors that play an important role in employee motivation?
Rajesh Pathak
Employee motivation is dependent on several important factors. Neglecting any of them can lead to decreasing motivation level, resulting in attrition.

Appreciation and fair recognition
It's very harmful for superiors to say 'When we are not saying anything, think you are doing well. When we say something, means you are doing something wrong'. This concept is harmful in long run because employees work extremely hard for the organization. Lack of constant appreciation and good words eventually let them feel that their contributions are not valued at all. They are doing some meaningless work which nobody cares about. They have become robots. Simply come, work, and go. Don't say anything and don't expect any appreciation. This is the case of lack of sufficient appreciation and recognition.

Then there are scenarios where employees were recognized long time back in history and then they were forgotten comfortably by management. This negligence of employees will eventually lead to employee attrition in the absence of constant appreciation and recognition.

There is another scenario where one team is appreciated but recognized with less value gifts while another team is appreciated and recognized with more valuable gifts. This kind of discrimination will let the less valued team think that their work is inferior, and nobody cares much about their work. No employee would like to stick to such kind of work and team for long.

Management Communication
If top bosses occasionally interact with employees via email or one to one conversation or in team meetings, employees feel good about themselves. They feel that they are also important part of the organization and their work is valued by the top bosses.

Lack of such management-employee interaction can create a lack of connection between both parties.

Job Security
Job security is one of the most important factors that affect employee motivation. When management adopts hire and fire approach, all employees in the organization start worrying about their financial future. They start making their resumes and keep giving interviews to ensure timely exit from such negative working environment.

Timely and fair remuneration
When employees are offered fair remuneration at the time of interview, they automatically get charged up for new role. When they get nice salary hikes, they get ready to show their best in their roles. When they get paid on time every month, that creates a good reputation for the company they work for and they start recommending the company to their near and dear ones.

Growth opportunities
Deserving employees should get growth and career advancement opportunities well on time. They shouldn't be offered promotions when they have already made up their mind to move on because for some employees this trick work and for some this trick fails.

Offering promotions on time leads to employee motivation.

Management support
At the time of family crisis, management should support the employees instead of threatening them with wage cut or termination notice or demotion. Once an employee is able to come out of family emergency situation, he/she will automatically start performing without any push from anybody. Human approach is must for human beings.

Proper training and mentoring
Proper process and product training is must for new employees joining the team. Proper SOPs and training manuals should be ready to train new employees well on time. Language of the trainers and mentors should be supportive while training.

Mutual respect and welcome approach
Culture of mutual respect should exist both in horizontal level and in vertical level. Employees should respect each other and there should not be any bullying or ragging culture prevalent in the organization. If any such incident is reported by any employee, human resource team and management team should take corrective action instead of putting things under the carpet. Neglecting such issues will make the bullies bolder and they won't let their easy preys perform in the organization.

Creating sense of ownership for the job
Snatching clients from one team and giving it to other team, shuffling team members from one team to other teams, not responding timely and politely to employees, threatening tone in official communication are some of the factors which can demotivate the employees and detach them from their work ownership.

To create a sense of ownership for their roles and jobs, they should get proper support, communication, and respect from the upper levels.

False promises
There are instances when it is seen that human resource people make false promises or inflated promises which they can’t keep after employees go onboard. Hiring employees by making false promises will create a negative image in the minds of employees about the organization from day one and they will spread the word inside and outside the organization.