Earlier today I read an article titled 9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money. When I see an article titled like that one is it tells me that the person who wrote it is not your average employee. I can assure you of one thing, your employees are just as motivated by these techniques in the long run as much money that you spent on them. the following are my suggestions on what you can do as management to help make happier employees, and at the same time not increase a persons salary.

 

1: Remove any sort of formal dress code. Being in the tech industry I am going to be biased on this one, and for good reason, the last time I saw a customer is when I ran into one of them at a Starbucks after hours. That customer did not know who I am, and had no idea who I worked for. Requiring someone like myself to wear a tie, or even slacks and a dress shirt every day does nothing for my professionalism or job doing ability.  If you are the sort of person who does have improvement in their productivity with no loss of morale, by all means dress up, but do not make it a requirement for everyone.

2: A good Work From Home Policy is a requirement for a company that is looking for happier employees.  I am not saying that you can send all of your employees for 100% work from home without any thought on the matter.  But at the same time you should have some sort of offering that shows your employees that you trust them to do their work without Big Brother looking over their shoulder all day long.

3: Removing Ghost Workers is one of the things that will help improve morale more than anything else.  Do you remember how two years ago Sally quit, or was fired, or was let go so that someone could “cut costs” and get their bonus? Do you remember handing out all of her tasks to people around the office in the interim? Did you ever end up hiring someone to take those tasks back? Did you ever increase the people’s pay who took over those tasks? In my experience, one of those things never happens, and it should. You cannot expect your employees to take over tasks that they were not hired for, with the same salary as when they were hired; even if the job market has them too scared to leave over it.

4: Fire Incompetent Employees. No one likes that guy in your office who has no idea what they are doing. They don’t like it when they fill out an email chain in order to find out who exactly should be doing what task. They very much don’t like constantly having to fix that person’s problems.  Yes it costs money to hire new employees, yes it costs less to “re-purpose” that person and get them on the right track. It also pisses off your employees, especially when you end up promoting this person just to get them out of the development team.

5: Give your employees a share of the company. No, I do not mean give them a twenty dollar gift with the company logo on it every 5 years. My general rule is, if you don’t want it, they don’t either.  I mean give them a share of the profits. Yeah that means that I think that your Board of Directors, and C-Levels do not deserve the bonuses that they are getting. Yes, those people make the decisions that make the company happen. No, they do not do the actual work that ends up making that profit.  Do I think a janitor deserves the same bonus as a programmer who writes your software? No, I am not completely ignorant, but when the company makes money as a result of your employees, so should your employees.

6: Stop trying to come up with ways to make your employees happy without spending more money.