What is the most driving force to keep your employees give their best performance at work? If your answer is either ‘good money’, ‘various benefits’, or ‘cool perks’, then you are not necessarily right. Above all of those factors, there is one invisible driving force that makes your employees perform to their best everyday and this is: motivation.

For HR leaders, keeping employees motivated is one of the biggest challenges today. Lack of employee motivation poses serious business issue that might cost your company’s financial backend. If your people are not motivated in their current job, it will lead to unproductive behaviour and even work quality could be hampered easily.  On the other hand, motivated employees are those who are able to demonstrate goal-oriented performance.

While some say that ‘the best motivation comes from within oneself, this is true. It is a part of your responsibility as a senior HR leader to encourage employees to showcase their best potentials. To realise a fast-paced and dynamic work setting can keep employees lively and motivated, first of all you need to find out the real motivational challenges.

See: How Can HR Managers Identify Candidates with Entrepreneurial Zest?

Here are some of the most crucial motivational challenges that you should pay attention:

Lack of Self-Confidence

Do your employees showcase reluctance to volunteer themselves as the next project leader? Or do they keep procrastinating tasks assigned to them? Be careful, there might be signs of lower employee confidence at times. Lack of self-confidence is often the most common problem faced by senior management.

Whereas, possessing high confidence is must-have value that guarantees successful employee performance. When employees believe that they have the ability to perform particular tasks, they will most likely succeed as well. However, when they demonstrate low self-confidence, they are doubtful of their own abilities and this will affect team workings to impact overall business growth.

Fear of Failure

When one is willing to be successful, they should be willing to fail, too. When an employee demonstrates little interest to challenge themselves with new things, this might signal their fear of failure.

While it is believed that failure is something inevitable in someone’s career journey, not all people can really embrace the idea. Hence, when employees fear failure, they tend to stay in their comfort zone and refuse changes. If you do not address this symptoms quickly, chances are, your business will remain stagnant for years.

Lack of passion

Let’s face it: not all of your employee work in the company with passion, but for the paycheck. Therefore, everyone exhibits different levels of passion toward their job roles. However, if you want to thrive in the competitive business world, you have to make sure that your employees show interest in their work.

When they are not engaged in their job, they tend to lose focus and fail to meet the expected goals. Feeling unhappy at work, these employees tend to perform poorly as they have no willingness to give their best.

Over Thinking and Anxiety

As a leader you are required  to deal with people from various backgrounds and characteristics. While some might be okay with direct and outspoken criticism, but the other could be too frail, or feel offended for too harsh suggestions. These kind of employees tend to take everything seriously that can lead to personal anxiety. Therefore, they are afraid of taking up new challenges, as they are afraid of the reactions and the criticism when they fail.

Smooth and better business operation can only be achieved with a motivated workforce, passionate and energised employees. Therefore, it is important for HR leaders to find the right strategy to address motivational issues faced by their employees at large and address them immediately.

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