What are the methods and techniques that motivate employees to work hard?

endorsing answers from other experts..

Stress free environment. paid leaves, income security etc

Let them feel they are the right people at the right place ............................................

salary , and smart environment( people , system , etc )   is  important

To motivate employees and to re-energize them to work hard, there are certain methods & techniques. To begin with, make sure you have the right conditions in place so that your work culture supports motivation.

Make sure you offer:

1- Fair pay and conditions

2- A comfortable, safe, working environment

3- Opportunities for employees to socialize and make friends

4- Clearly defined work responsibilities and goals

5- Education and training opportunities

6- Career development opportunities

7- Make them feel that they are important for you

8-  Make employees feel they are doing something meaningful

9- Give them due respect

10- "Have and show" faith and trust in your employees

As a manager, you play a key role in building on a solid foundation and motivating employees. Remember that70% of people leave their boss, not the company. 

The Reward system. Every organization is characterized by a particular type of reward structure, often differing from person to person and from department to department.

As author Michael LeBoeuf says in his book, The Greatest Management Principle in the World, “What gets rewarded gets done.” If you want more of something in an organization, simply increase greater rewards for that behavior. If you want less of an activity in an organization, simply reduce the rewards, or increase the punishment or disapproval for that behavior. People respond to incentives.

It is quite common for companies to identify their most profitable products and services, and then increase the percentage of commission that salespeople will receive for selling those specific products and services, while maintaining lower commissions for less profitable items. Salespeople, and managers for that matter, respond very quickly to increased or decreased financial rewards for specific behaviors or for achieving specific goals.

Organizational climate. Is your company a “great place to work”? The organizational climate is deliberately created and maintained by management. It largely consists of the way that people treat each other up and down the line.

When Thomas J. Watson, Sr., started IBM, he laid out the three core values of the company. These values—excellent products and services, excellent customer service, and respect for the individual—would determine the future of IBM, eventually making it the biggest and most respected computer company in the world.

The principle of “respect for the individual” was adamantly enforced at every level of the organization, both nationally and internationally. You could make almost any mistake at all at IBM, except one. You could not disrespect, demean, or insult another person, either inside or outside of the organization. Treating people badly, especially people under your authority, was grounds for dismissal, no matter how long you had been with the company.

As a result of this element of organizational climate, not only did people compete vigorously to get into IBM in the first place, but once there they were some of the happiest, most productive, and creative people in any company in any industry.

The structure of the work. Some work is inherently motivational, requiring creativity, imagination, and high levels of energy. Work that involves communicating, negotiating, and interacting with other people in order to gain their cooperation to get the job done quickly and well brings out the best energies of the individual. It is exciting and challenging. It is usually highly rewarding as well.

However, an enormous amount of work must be standardized, routinized, and made relatively unexciting in order to be done efficiently and cost effectively. It is hard to motivate factory workers who work on a production line all day and whose activities are carefully monitored and regulated to ensure maximum levels of productivity.

Good organizations are always trying to structure the work so as to match the nature of the work with the nature of the employee and to make the work as interesting and enjoyable as possible.

The Leader Can Made an Immediate Difference

The reward structure, the organizational climate, and the structure of the work can be changed, but usually slowly; everything must be thought through carefully and in detail. The leadership style of an organization, however, is the one factor that can be changed quickly, and this change can make a major difference almost overnight.

There is a story of a factory whose managers were highly political and more concerned with their own rewards and privileges than they were with the morale of the workers. The factory was demoralized suffering low levels of productivity and high levels of defects, and it was on the verge of being shut down by the head office.

Instead of shutting the factory down, the head office sent in a new general manager, replacing the existing management completely. On his first day on the job, the general manager was waiting when the first shift of workers arrived that morning, parking their cars out in the unpaved parking lot and walking through the mud to the factory entrance.

When the entire shift had gathered, the new manager introduced himself, and then in front of everybody, walked over to the reserved parking spaces lined up next to the main entrance, where the executives were accustomed to parking when they arrived at work. An assistant gave him a bucket of paint, and the new manager walked along the wall, painting out the names of the executives for whom the parking spaces had been reserved. “From now on, whoever gets here first gets the best parking space,” he told the workers.

Within six months, that factory was producing at the highest level in its history, and it was one of the most productive and profitable factory operations in the entire national organization. One highly motivational leader with a clear, exciting vision for the organization can become a motivational force for change and transformation, even when everything else is unchanged.