Intangible motivation of employees

Intangible motivation of employees does not depend on bonuses and salaries. It allows you to make the work environment more comfortable, increasing productivity. This method of encouragement will retain valuable personnel and increase the prestige of the company. 

People work for money, but each new salary increase has a diminishing effect. When financial needs are met, comfort and happiness become important to the individual. Privileges and bonuses will make the time spent at work comfortable, while the employee will become more satisfied with their position. 

It is not necessary to have your own canteen for lunches. You can do with the delivery of food on Fridays or at all allocate money to people to buy food. 

There are three reasons to use intangible motivation:

1. Cheapness. Intangible motivation of staff can be tangible, it is not tied to salaries and bonuses. An example is providing free lunches or gifts. The bonus is nice, inexpensive and memorable.
   
   
2. A moderate increase in productivity. People will find it easier to accomplish tasks in the future because they will feel useful and important.
   
   
3. Improving the atmosphere within the company. If it is ignored, the perception will spread among employees that they work solely for money.
   

Bad relations in the team can become a reason for dismissal and slow down the development of the whole company. 

With the use of extra incentives, it becomes easier for staff to compete for positions, people will also find it easier to take on more difficult tasks that are not paid for.

Intangible motivation: examples and applications

Let's look at 11 examples of how you can improve your team situation to increase productivity:

For example, they can use new equipment or offer their ideas to their bosses more often. Even the ability to connect with upper management without problems is a privilege that gives a sense of significance and importance.

Employees of the month and active people can be rewarded with project selection and special treatment. 

Don't want to spend money on a trainer? Hire the most experienced person in the firm and ask them to share their experience with newcomers. 

7. Providing additional comfort at work. Improving the working environment depends on the activities of the firm. Professions that involve physical labor need lunches, proper tools and uniforms. For mental laborers, it is important to have a comfortable workplace and a good temperature in the office.

In the programs you can make leaderboards with the results. 

The weakest departments, on the contrary, were sent to trainings, improving their skills. As prizes for the competition should be chosen worthy gifts, otherwise motivation will be insufficient.

A common practice is to hold competitions between companies. The scheme is the same, only the budget increases due to the larger number of participants. There is no need to worry about the level of stress among employees, as the competition without penalties only leads to an increase in motivation. 

There are other ways to make people more motivated. These include:  

• changing the name of the workplace
• giving commendations 
• thanking people for the work they've done.

But research shows that their contribution to the work process is minimal.

What is the right way to reward employees?

The intangible motivation system should have specific objectives:

• The tasks to be solved should be short-term and understandable. For example, if the business has branches, the local staff should be trained and able to work according to the standards of the main office. In this case, trainings and refresher courses will help.
  
  
• Increasing productivity is necessary for everyone. Often the techniques of non-material motivation are used only on specific departments that seem to bring the main income. But the larger the firm, the more it employs people whose labor is unnoticeable but important (accountants, production workers). For them, too, you can develop a system of incentives.
  

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• The system should be developed together with the company. For the owner of the company, intangible motivation costs money, and in some cases it makes sense to invest in salary increases rather than free lunches or trainings. Most often, a business with a few employees is kept on enthusiasm, about additional bonuses should think only when expanding the team.

free way to motivate employees for a small firm - planned distribution of days off at the end of each month.

Intangible motivation falls into two categories: evaluating the performance of one person or the entire team.

What happens if you don't introduce intangible motivation?

Employers may not understand why non-material motivation is necessary. Its importance can be explained through research, but since there is not much material about Russia, let's look at global experience. The research was conducted by the Gallup company, and it showed the following results:

• Only 23% of the world's respondents are involved in their work. This slows down work processes, and communication with the team weakens. In Russia, the figure is 27%.
• Six out of ten employees are psychologically distracted from their work. They may imitate a flurry of activity, but more often they think about other things and see no point in accomplishing the tasks at hand.
  
• Nearly half of those surveyed experience serious stress at work. This leads to fatigue and poor job performance. Burnout is the cause of employee turnover, loss of desire to learn, misconduct, etc.
  
• Money comes first when applying for a job, but the opportunity for growth and development is in the top three.
  
• When respondents were asked if they wanted to change anything, about 85% gave a positive answer. And in about half of the cases it was about intangible motivation.
  

The results show that even place of work has less of an impact on stress levels than engagement. 

Performing unnecessary duties demotivates people, causing them to look for another job. 

This means that a good team and an understanding boss are more important to most people than the ability to be close to home or remote.

Learn the right way to improve the work environment

Flexible schedules, good bosses, and a comfortable environment are tools that you need to use correctly. Here's the path to follow:

• Deciding on goals and budget. The first thing to do is try to figure out what the firm needs. This could be improved sales performance, brand loyalty, and simply increased productivity in the field. Next, we study what can theoretically help with this issue.
• We conduct a survey among employees to take into account their point of view. We compare the results with the opportunities available.
  
• We work out a plan, which will include instruments of non-material motivation, conditions of their application and terms of their introduction.
  
• We monitor the result, which may include both changes in productivity and employees' opinion of the company.
  

If the result does not meet expectations, we change the policy, improving it.

When non-material motivation will not work?

Even a competent implementation of intangible motivation may not increase productivity. Let's analyze a few problems that employers face.

Improper allocation of funds. First of all, you need to spend money on material incentives for the team. If employees are congratulated on holidays and given gifts, but do not pay a decent salary, they will go looking for a high-paying job. That is why it is important to ask questions about salary levels in the questionnaire.

There are two ways to solve the problem:

1. In small firms, it is enough to talk to the employees and make sure that the income suits each of them.
2. In larger firms, it is better to analyze the market for average salaries and then assess whether the firm is paying its employees enough.
   

Mismatch of needs. People have desires that they want to fulfill. Intangible motivation helps to satisfy them. But it can be misused, raising costs and failing to achieve results. For example, an employee wants to get free lunches, but instead they are forced to go to training after work. 

Want to avoid constant questionnaires? Ask employees to indicate important values when they are hired. 

A similar problem occurs when there are no questionnaires that need to be administered beforehand. If it is difficult to get everyone's opinion, you can survey managers and then pass the results to specialists.

Untimely motivation. Sometimes some incentives are used too late, because of which they stop working. An employee who needed a refresher course at the beginning of his career may find himself dissatisfied with a useless training session a few years later. The solution to this problem is simple: talk to team members about their needs in advance.

Lack of transparency. Employees may not know what non-material motivation is, but they realize the importance of direct communication with their superiors or trips paid for by the company. Therefore, they need to understand how to earn a specific bonus. If there are no clear ways to earn privileges, it will be more difficult for people to achieve them. It is enough to familiarize the staff with the conditions that need to be met to get the bonus.

Staff interest. In trying to utilize useful practices, you need to remember to work and communicate. Perhaps performance can be improved with additional meetings with supervisors, new equipment in the field, or increased staffing. Workers themselves may be dissatisfied with the introduction of a reward system, believing it to be meaningless in the absence of a suitable working environment.

We consider frequently asked questions

When dealing with intangible motivation, businessmen may have questions related to the process of encouraging employees. Let's consider some of them. 

How do I check the effectiveness of incentives?

There are several ways to assess how the practices being put in place are impacting the business:

• Checking employee turnover. If it has been reduced over a certain period, it means that people like the new state of affairs. 
• Directly checking employee satisfaction. For this purpose, questionnaires and surveys are conducted, and the opinions of managers can also be taken into account. 
• Increase in production and economic efficiency. It is checked through statistics and other data.

Questionnaires, surveys and statistics are primary for checking.

What is the difference between motivating and incentivizing staff?

Motivation of an employee refers to internal needs. If they are satisfied - it will increase and a person will become more productive. Incentives affect human behavior from the outside and can be extended to a group of employees.

Where to start?

Ways of non-material motivation can be several dozen, not every company is able to realize them all. To choose the most important ones, you can refer to the research Avito.Work, which was conducted in 2017. Employees considered the following bonuses to be the most effective:

• 64% voted for flexible working hours;
• 56% of respondents care about the attitude in the team;
• 52% of employees thought they benefited from the firm's training and career development;
• for a quarter of respondents the personality of the manager was important;
• 19% wanted to be able to influence decisions within the company;
• 12% wanted public recognition of merits;
• for 11% of respondents the corporate culture was important.

The results show that it is necessary to start not with free lunches or diplomas, but with training opportunities and working out the atmosphere within the team. In a separate survey about 40% of respondents would like to move up the career ladder, another 38% want horizontal growth and improvement of existing skills.

It is possible to familiarize people with company ideas, prospects and career development immediately after hiring through a presentation. It is important not to forget success stories.

You can also benefit from the experience of other employers:

• 41% agree on the benefits of training and professional development;
• for 36% it is important to maintain a good atmosphere in the team;
• 28% allow employees to influence the development of the company;
• a quarter also consider the personality of the boss to be important;
• 23% see the need for career prospects;
• corporate culture is important for a fifth of employers;
• 18% use work schedule as an intangible motivation. 
• only 8% use public recognition of merit in the company.

Both employers and employees consider it necessary to provide in-house training. But not everyone has the money to hire specialists and turn to trainers. Therefore, let's briefly touch upon how you can improve the qualification of an employee:

• 74% of the surveyed employees consider on-the-job training useful;
• for 59% it is important to be mentored by a more experienced colleague;
• 52% of respondents consider trainings and seminars to be effective;
• 46% of the surveyed respondents need exchange of experience;
• distance learning is effective for only 18% of employees;
• conferences are useful for 18% of employees.

Business owners' views on the main types of intangible motivation are slightly different - they favor on-the-job training, experience sharing and mentoring the most.. But in both cases, the focus should not only be on people's opinions, but also on the benefits, as one trainer can train a group of employees, while conferences are useful for developing plans and sharing ideas.

Which incentive system is more effective: material or non-material?

At first it is important to provide good salaries to the staff. But in the future, bonuses will be less effective, and they will be replaced by the closure of other needs and new ways of encouragement. The more qualified a specialist is, the more types of non-material motivation can be applied to him.

A person who came to work only for money will not spend all his efforts to fulfill the task. Therefore, it is important to encourage him in other ways.