In a recent article about employee motivation from HR Magazine called Employers face a challenge to retain their most talented employees, warns a Randstad survey, the article and survey talked about  how employers don’t really understand what motivates their employees, they are conscious of managing costs and that employees bemoan the fact that employers are not fully utilising their skills.

We spend a lot of time thinking about what motivates customers to buy from our businesses. Could we learn something about employee motivation if we treated our people as customers?

So, what would our people as customers want:

• Some of them would want recognition
• Some of them would want to be part of something bigger
• Some of them would want safety
• Some of them would want respect
• Some of them would want you to ask their opinion
• Some of them would want you to act on their suggestions if they make sense and if they don’t then they would want you to tell them
• Some want responsibility (some of the time)
• Some want to belong
• Some want security
• Some want a mixture of all of the above

However, many of them will forgive you a lot of these if you are honest and open with them. Like most other relationships.

That doesn’t make a leader, manager or owners job any easier but it certainly would build better relationships with your people, probably would improve employee motivation and wouldn’t cost much too.

Thanks to netzkobold for the image.