Managers who ask their team what motivates them and makes them want to stay at a company will receive a variety of answers — including increased pay, opportunities for promotion, purposeful work and stability. Some of these motivators might seem difficult or impossible to fulfill when a company has set budgets or is wrestling with major changes and cannot alter employees’ benefits.

The truth is, each employee’s preferences are unique and can go beyond the list offered above — so managers must communicate to understand what their employees really want and how to connect them with those opportunities. This article reviews the critical skills that managers need to help their team find or sustain their motivation based on what’s already available, but perhaps underutilized, at their job.

Training managers on these techniques will help them get to the core of what their employees need to be engaged in their work — even if, at first glance, it seems like everything they’ve asked for isn’t available due to resource constraints.

Managers must have conversations to learn what employees want.

For many employees, pay and benefits are critical in determining where they want to work. However, evidence shows that employees also factor in work-life balance and meaning — increasingly so for younger generations.

Evolving trends provide hints about what employees want out of work, but each employee has unique experiences, preferences, skills, and other assets they bring to bear on their work. Managers must learn to have in-depth conversations with employees that go beyond work tasks and compensation. This will involve managers talking to their employees — respectfully and without judgment — about what energizes them or holds them back from feeling enthusiastic and engaged in their work. Managers and employees need to work together to identify any gaps in what employees are seeking in their career at their current level, then problem solve to fill those gaps. This could involve removing barriers that pop up in daily work or helping employees upskill.

During these conversations, managers need to pay attention to their emotions — avoiding displays of frustration while candidly exploring which follow-up actions will benefit their whole team. As changes take hold and an employee’s work becomes closer to what they want, they might realize that they prefer not to change jobs after all.

Managers must coach employees on building their careers.

Managers might be surprised to learn that employees who want to advance their career might prefer not climbing the corporate ladder.  Some want to develop in other ways, like expanding their skills in their current role. Other employees might be interested in lateral moves within the company, whereby they try out other skills without advancing. This can broaden the number of job opportunities they have, including within the company.

During formal discussions about performance, train managers to make time to identify what their employees’ wants and needs are for development. Then, managers can tap into their company’s resources to find pertinent and available opportunities — and encourage their employees to do the same, with the awareness that company offerings can evolve over time.  This is another reason managers must encourage their employees to be honest about their feedback and respond to company-wide surveys: They offer great opportunities for employees to possibly enhance their job fit (in career development and beyond). Once employees have access to what they need, managers must allot their employees’ time, weekly or monthly, to spend on development.

Managers must foster connectedness among their team — especially remote employees.

For most employees, connectedness is important — it amplifies collaboration, makes employees feel like a part of the organization’s culture and can satisfy social needs.

Whether a manager’s team is remote, hybrid or all in person, connectedness is important for any team to function at its best. To build connectedness, training professionals can encourage managers to pay attention to barriers faced by remote employees when they connect to their team — such as fatigue from interacting with coworkers exclusively through virtual platforms. Managers must also guide their whole team to coordinate on their preferred methods for connecting with each other. Once employees decide on what they want, managers can facilitate that by modeling those connectedness behaviors and giving their team time to be social with each other.  Managers need to be patient and receptive to feedback as the team finds a flow that helps them build authentic connectedness. This will help employees gain autonomy and feel in control of these important aspects of their daily work.

Managers need to establish a process for employees supporting each other.

A safe, productive environment is created when employees know they can lean on each other. This buffers against stressors because employees know they can call upon their support system to take on a challenge — and any burdens aren’t resting entirely on one person’s shoulders.

Managers must facilitate these support systems.  They need to remove silos so each employee has access to fresh perspectives and sources of expertise.  This will involve managers setting up productive collaborations among team members who usually don’t get the opportunity to interact.  To drum up ideas for collaboration, managers can interview their team members for suggestions.  Beyond formal projects, managers must reminder their team to habitually reach out and have casual collisions (even virtually) so they can maintain ownership over their connections to co-workers.  Employees intending to have each other’s backs isn’t sufficient — managers need to ensure the team knows how to do each other’s work so they can ask for help when they need it.

In Conclusion

In today’s environment, companies are better off focusing on being precise about employees’ needs and not competing with the benefits offered by other companies, which may or may not be what employees are looking for.

Managers are in an optimal position to help employees explore what they want their working situation to be — both individually and as a part of a team — so they’ll be likelier to stay. As managers become proficient in guiding employees through this process, they can bring out their team’s best potential, which can be a major boon in productivity and satisfaction for the company, the team and for employees themselves.

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