How to Motivate an Existing Employee

You spent a lot of time and effort in building your team. Now that they've been on the job for a while, you need to motivate them to stay engaged and reach their career goals.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Plan from Section 1
• Understanding of the 70-20-10 method of career development (see related articles or search eHow)

Find Out Why They Work

1. Meet with the employee to have a conversation about why they work. This may sound too candid, but it's not. Understanding the motivation for why someone works will help you. Having to articulate this thought to their manager will help your employee.

2. Review their stated motivation for working with their current job and career goals. Does everything make sense? Are they motivated by writing projects, but work in a numbers role? Are they passionate about sales but work in operations? Help them align their motivation and work.

3. Have the new employee draw up a plan that will align the job goals you presented and the career goals they want.

4. Set up a weekly one-on-one meeting to review the plan and discuss any other successes or challenged he employee may encounter.

Provide a Variety of Motivation Opportunities

5. Employee development should occur with 70 percent experiences, 20 percent mentoring and social networking, and 10 percent formal training.

6. Spend most of your career management time for this employee leading them to on-the-job experiences that help them accomplish their goals.

7. Spend some time connecting them with others that will enhance their career experiences. Industry groups, mentors, and networking are all great guidance.

8. Spend very little time searching out formal training opportunities. Should a particular career experience require some additional training, then find the right courses. Otherwise, minimize seminars, formal internal or external training, or workshops unless they directly tie into and impact a career experience.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't worry that you're giving extra time to an employee. They need the support. You should treat each of your employees fairly, not necessarily equally, in the time you give to them.
• If your idea of career development is to simple send someone to a formal training, with no connected follow-on experience or mentoring, you need to get some training yourself!

[beyond]

on 12/24/2008 The trick is to not annoy them, which some think we're doing...