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Knowing your audience is key to employee motivation strategy

Motivation programmes are more important than ever. Research shows they can be an effective way to address the Great Resignation, and attract the right new talent. But incentive schemes are only as good as their design, and most companies are yet to use the best source of data to tailor strategy around their employee audience.

Employee motivation programmes are more important than ever. According to research published by Team Stage, well motivated employees are 87 per cent less likely to resign, and 42 per cent of job seekers look at incentive programmes when considering a new position.

Aside from employee retention and talent recruitment, there are plenty of other well understood reasons for adopting staff motivation schemes. Employees work 20 per cent more efficiently, it reduces absenteeism by an average of 41 per cent, and company profits are 27 per cent higher. More than that, a Gallup survey suggests that motivated employees continuously seek ways to improve productivity, and assist overloaded colleagues in an effort to try to improve efficiency.

But Gallup also discovered that on average, only 15 per cent of employees feel motivated, fewer than half are fully aware of company incentive schemes and what they involve, and the goals.

Focus is on the wrong numbers
If ever there was an HR subject that lends itself to statistics it is employee motivation programmes. The potential for a deluge of figures is huge, but very often the analysis faces the wrong way. Numbers and charts can appear useful while actually only serving to distort the real picture. ‘Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything,’ as the writer Gregg Easterbrook said.

The crucial analysis that is nearly always missing from company incentive data relates to employee sentiment. In other words, the views and thoughts of those who are at the centre of the incentive agenda usually go unknown. Instead, understanding is based on looking at performance indicators, and crude measurements like sales figures and absenteeism, which tells a lot, but whether those outcomes would have happened anyway, or could be radically improved, and how, is something usually never known. And this information is knowable.

Progressive HR departments are using social media analysis to not only understand employee response to incentives schemes, but also learn workforce motivation triggers to create better planning of performance strategy.

Use of social media data in enabling HR departments to achieve consistently better results often surprises. The simple fact is that it is possible to dig very deep to understand the sentiment of employees. This is due to social media pixels, which are small packets of code that can be tracked to observe the content of posts, discussions and movement on social media, and even onto website platforms.

At a basic level, pixels allow for the identification of demographic data such as age, location, gender, interests and behaviour. But software analysis tools can be used to apply more than 40 million attributes to turn demographic understanding into highly detailed psychographic analysis.

In practice, what this means is that it is possible to know what employees think about an existing incentive programme, how it applies to them, what they like about it, what they don’t like about it, what the discussion is with colleagues, whether they think it is actually making a difference, and how they believe it could be improved. It is also possible to gather a huge amount of valuable background information such as attitude to leadership, quality of company products or services, and whether there is a belief that different departments effectively support each other. Anything said relating to staff motivation can be monitored.

It is also possible to gain detailed insight into employee motivational triggers in order to be far more effective when deciding content of incentive campaigns. But also what the audience thinks of the delivery of programmes, whether they actually notice and understand them, the perception of reward packages and whether a previous programme impressed or failed to impress. Unless positives and negatives are known and understood, they cannot be learned from, and there is the possibility mistakes are carried through into the future.

By understanding what employee interests are, and what excites them it is possible to create programme content that is exactly correct. This presents a huge opportunity to tailor strategy to optimise workforce performance, and create a stronger bond and sense of belonging between company and individuals.

In addition, there is the facility to analyse the performance of incentive schemes of rival companies by looking at what their employees say. You can find out what works for the opposition, and what doesn’t.

Alter programmes when you need to
It is not just the design of campaigns that benefits from social insight. You can track campaigns in real time. Analysis can be examined in detail. For example, it might be seen that younger demographics respond better than older employees, or female better than male, and always there is the ability to know why.

The ‘why’ of the audience is vitally important, and can be monitored as it inevitably changes. It means alterations can be made quickly when there is the need, plus it is possible to tell if they have have achieved the desired effect.

There is a final key role for social media in successfully inducing greater productivity. It is the most effective medium for internal company communication. It shortens the gap between the corporate body and employees like nothing else. Social media is a common currency used on a regular basis, and is perfect for conveying incentive programme messages.

It has big advantages over the alternatives of updates by email or intranet messaging, that can quickly become tiresome, and look too formal, which undermines the purpose of an incentive programme. Similarly, regular verbal updates rapidly cease to have any special significance, and notice board posts lack impact and get bypassed.

However, within reasonable bounds, frequency is not a concern with social media. Two or three updates a week don’t equate to overload, and provides plenty of scope for keeping motivation programmes front of mind, on track and as active as possible.

The combination of analysis and as a delivery platform makes social media the best practical tool for driving performance strategy. We will inevitably see increased use in the years to come.

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