How to motivate employees and set discipline

It takes leadership skills, vision and understanding to motivate employees and establish discipline in a business. The purpose of this article is to help businesses to resolve this problem by offering simple motivational and discipline suggestions.

1. How to motivate employees?

In order for employees to work hard and devote themselves to their work, businesses must create their emotional catalyst. Try the ways below and see the results.

• Work must have meaning – According to a survey, 29% of employees consider the work they do to bring value to the organization as the biggest motivator to contribute. Only 25% do it for the money and 17% love to be recognized. For this reason, enterprises must provide employees with clear goals and visions so that they feel their efforts are worth it, that they are contributing to the business’ success.
• Continuous Communication – To achieve the set goals, businesses and department heads need to continuously communicate to employees about how to apply new technologies, new processes, or improvement strategies. This process must take place regularly and closely. Employees also need to have KPIs to strive for, as well as evaluate results every month to show them how much effort is needed to achieve the goal.
• Clear job description – Using metric-based job descriptions and expectations will prevent employees from being confused and working superficially.
• Do not blame heavily – As employees and special departments find it difficult to avoid mistakes during work, leaders should avoid using hateful language to demoralize employees. Rather than focusing on individual mistakes, leaders should exhibit a sharing attitude and find ways to solve problems together.

For example, a salesperson makes a mistake in a customer’s order, the management should not be angry, asking “Who made this mistake?”, but should say “This mistake now how should we solve it?” so that the employee who caused the error boldly proposes to correct the mistake. This is also a way to motivate employees to make efforts and learn how to handle problems that arise.

• Giving trust – People’s self-esteem is very high and employees will work hard if they know that the leader believes in them. As a leader, you should empower them to decide on challenging new projects, encouraging them to find creative ways to accomplish them. In the event that the expected success cannot be achieved, the leadership should not be angry. Instead, they should join the staff to draw knowledge and experience. Motivating employees in this way is a great way to encourage them to work harder.
• Recognition of achievements – It is undeniable that employees still like to be recognized for achievements after achieving the set goals. Therefore, businesses need to have material or spiritual rewards to motivate employees to try harder. When rewarding through specific measurable and measurable criteria, be fair.
• Create opportunities for teamwork – Creating cohesion among members is also a way to motivate employees. During teamwork, employees need to coordinate, exchange and help each other to complete tasks. These things will open up a friendly working environment, employees have the opportunity to express personal opinions and learn from colleagues, develop social and professional skills.

2. Discipline must be in work

When it comes to discipline, there are two types of discipline that exist in the business: compulsory discipline and voluntary discipline. Specifically:

• Compulsory discipline: Organizations use compulsory discipline to keep employees working effectively and preventing mistakes by controlling and mandating it. This type of discipline requires the organization to closely monitor its employees’ activities. Discipline that is too strict, however, can easily lead to resentment, resistance, and the intention to leave the organization.
• Voluntary Discipline: This is the highest form of discipline expression. In an organization, voluntary discipline refers to self-discipline between leaders and subordinates, based on mutual trust. Using this form, employees will be more responsible for the organization’s overall goal, demonstrating a positive attitude throughout.

To establish voluntary discipline in an organization, businesses should:

• Have a clear, fair and realistic policy for employees to easily grasp.
• Ensure all employees adhere to the principles and standards of the business.
• The organization needs to be flexible to change the rules that the majority is not satisfied with or affect the work of the collective.
• Clear punishment when members of the organization make mistakes based on the rules of the business, this will create a corporate culture that complies with regulations.
• Enterprises must have a dedicated department to answer business rules because many employees are slow to adapt.

3. Combining motivation and discipline increases performance dramatically

Combining the two forms above will boost employee productivity. In the sense that motivation catalyzes and motivates employees to put in effort, discipline refers to the ability to maintain that enthusiasm.

An important paradox is that when a company or management only motivates employees through motivation, they will eventually become less productive. You will not be able to achieve new achievements if you have a loose mentality, relying on your previous accomplishments.

It is also important to note that a manager who is too strict and adheres to the policy will depress employees due to the feeling of untruth and lack of motivation.

In order to achieve integrity at work and to achieve the organization’s overall goals, managers should flexibly combine physical (bonus) and mental motivation, while also applying discipline at work.

The above are simple ways to build discipline, and how to motivate employees in the business that management can consider given the current size of the company. Hopefully the article will bring useful knowledge to help solve human resource problems for businesses. Continue to follow BEMO to update more useful knowledge about management.