Employee Motivation: Removing the Need for Time and Attendance Tracking?

Business profitability is a very tangled, highly interdependent web of different factors. One of the major contributors to either a ballooning bottom line, or a cutback in costs for the same output, is your employee motivation. A mixture of positive and proactive measures to help your employees want to be more productive, as well as 'controlling' strategies that help keep costs tightly reined in, like telephone time clocks for time attendance tracking, seem to work best. Today we check out some simple tips on both the motivating, and the cost-controlling sides of your labour budget.

"The same holds true for work!"

Employee motivation: Simple strategies and home truths

There are seven broad policies and managerial strategies that can help boost your profits, above and beyond the impact that controlling strategies can make. You'll need to do some work to identify how well your business already implements these; however this is a more concise and all-encompassing way to think about motivation.

• Positive reinforcement and high expectations: Let your employees know that you expect the best from them ... but make sure you recognize both their achievements and efforts.
• Effective discipline: If employees see somebody else getting away with doing the wrong thing, they lose their own motivation to do the right thing.
• Treating people fairly: Obviously this one needs some subjective interpretation. The letter and spirit of the law are good guides!
• Satisfying employee needs: These can be safety-related, comfort-related, pay-related and recognition-related
• Setting goals: It is far easier to motivate someone to work towards a concrete eventuality than to just 'do better'.
• Restructuring jobs: Endless restructuring won't necessarily boost profits - but can be a necessary first step before other strategies will work
• Instituting performance-based pay: Extra money is a massive motivator for many people to do extra work!

Controlling labor costs: Easy methods

It can be amazing how much difference simple tools for controlling labour costs can make also. Ensure that you:

• Require medical certificates for sick leave pay
• Institute a telephone time clock system to ensure that employees are paid only for the exact hours they are at work
• Always aim to keep existing employees rather than train new ones
• Ensure that supervisors have the power to note people not working, and that there is some sort of penalty.