Motivating your staff without money
Robert Koci
Videos Canadian Contractor Profitability building houses carpenters company culture driving nails money motivating staff nbsp renovation company videoThere is more to life than money
By Rob Koci
When you grow to a place where you have five or more employees, knowing how they are motivated to do good work, show up on time and stay positive becomes essential to your success. The lecturer in this video, Dan Pink, will give you the fundamentals of what motivates people. He uses examples of employees in the IT industry, but don’t be dissuaded. What he says will apply equally to carpenters, labourers and plumbers.
The illustrating that accompanies this lecture becomes a bit annoying, but hang in there. You will learn something important about what motivates people in general and how you can design your company culture to keep your guys motivated and productive.
I’ll give you a head start: Pink says that you need to pay your employees enough money to take the issue of money off the table. After that, your employees will be motivated by three key things: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. It becomes important then, to find your company’s “transcendent purpose.” There has to be something beyond driving nails and building houses that your company stands for.
As I listened to the video, I could see clearly how those motivators could be built into a renovation company. Tell if you think so, too.
Motivating staff without money
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Very interesting research findings and concepts–though I don’t see obvious ways of implementing them within the renovation field. You have building codes, architectural plans, standard trade practices, the home owner’s wants and wishes: not much room in the way of allowing for autonomy and creativity in lieu of straight monetary rewards as you may in other fields I think.
I think there is plenty of room for all three motivations within a construction company. In fact, I think that without attending to these motivational factors, you will always have a hard time keeping employees.
I think the best way to motivate a good, smart site supervisor, for instance, is to defer to him when there is need for a creative solution to a problem. When you let him take control and have some responsibility, you are doing what this video suggests, motivating without money.
We allow each site super to decide how and when to perform the jobs (and who will do them as well). It happens during our site meeting each week. All the employees are there to have input into the tick list. This way, they see you as a boss and a vision caster, not just a cheque signer. This is the time that the employees’ creative juices should be coming out. This is when you build them into a team that they feel proud to be part of. You get what you tolerate. Stan