Employee motivation isn’t always good

Employee motivation is important to encourage employees to perform their best. Still, wrong motivation can bring out negative effects on your employees and your business. That’s why to understand positive and negative effects of motivation on employee performance is crucial in your attempt to drive revenue.

Job satisfaction

A worker rightly motivated by the supervisor should perform better in his particular job role, provided that the supervisor understands the role and gives clear coaching. Your business mission statement should point a worker to a definition of success. For instance, if you motivate your worker by specifying that, success in his/ her position is synonymous to detailing every car in the lot daily, and you reward him/ her when he/ she does it, he/ she understands what is expected.

Performance

Motivated staff performs better. If you give commission to a salesperson, he/ she often tries harder to sell more. If you thank a worker for good customer service, he/ she will likely endeavor to duplicate it, as he/ she feels appreciated. By contrast, if you motivate by threatening to lower the hours of an underperforming worker, he/ she may also try harder to avert the negative consequence of the motivation.

Turnover

If your motivation attempts has flaws, are badly executed, or unrealistic, they may induce increased turnover. This may come in the form of attrition or dismissals. Workers may see others being rewarded for good performance, and feel unappreciated. Workers that don’t see the rationale of motivation or what’s expected of them may stop trying, or resign. Employee turnover is time-consuming and expensive.

Dishonesty

If you motivate wrongly, you may teach your employees to be dishonest. For example, if you don’t tie customer satisfaction in with the sales statistics when you motivate your staff, you, by default, are endorsing sales no matter what. This may induce deception, staff quarreling over customers and over sales, and fabricating statistics. The consequence is decrease in customers and employee satisfaction.