In our last blog, we talked about the importance of how you can increase your profits and optimise the performance of your employees by applying some basic principles in performance management. A vital part in all of this is clearly communicating your goals so that your employees understand:

– your priorities;
– how they contribute to these goals;
– how they are going to be managed;
– what support you as a business and a manager are going to provide them with to help them to achieve their goals.

On the flip side, it’s also about you as a business having strong lines of communication with your employees so that you know and understand what motivates them to deliver and exceed your expectations. Using the technical term, in both instances, what we are talking about is called the ‘psychological contract’, namely knowing what motivates the business and what motivates the employees, which equates to a meeting of minds and ultimately when this happens, this is when your business will flourish.

Now is a critical time to make sure that your employees are pointing in the right direction, and are motivated to do so, to enable you to achieve your goals and get those profits rolling in.

In our last article we talked about your business having goals and ensuring that these are clearly communicated and understood by all employees. If we link this to the idea behind the ‘psychological contract’ in making sure that your employees can relate to these goals by understanding what motivates the employee, motivating them becomes of critical importance.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of personal needs, he used a pyramid (below) to demonstrate what motivates employees, starting with the very basic needs of food, shelter etc.. needing to be met and once these have been achieved, the employee will generally move to the next stage of motivation.

The key is to make sure that you have clear lines of communication through robust performance management systems to support and drive the performance of your employees. By investing in them at an early stage, it may mean the difference between reducing your opportunity for business growth, potentially losing your best employees and building stronger working relationships with your employees, your clients and increasing those profits.