How to Motivate Workers Without Money: 5 Smart Tips

Blue collar workers are the backbone of American society. They work with their feet on the ground to keep our houses warm, transportation running, and technology operating properly. Power plant operators, construction workers, and plumbers are all examples of blue collar workers.?

In the post-pandemic economy, the demand for blue collar workers is growing rapidly. Since the beginning of 2023, there have been more than 770,000 skilled job postings across the country. A report by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute shows that there could be 2.4 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2028.?

The Blue Collar Drought is imminent, and now more than ever it’s important to improve employee engagement and figure out creative ways to motivate your employees.?

The nature of blue collar work makes common engagement strategies used with office workers — such as work from home benefits — irrelevant. So, how do you make your blue collar employees feel motivated?

Going Beyond Monetary Rewards for Blue Collar Workers

Offering financial incentives is the most straightforward way to engage hourly employees, but there are other things that you can — and should — do to motivate your team members.?

Contrary to popular belief, blue collar workers are interested in more than just a paycheck.?

They also want a good work/life balance, to have their voices heard, and to be treated with respect. To improve employee retention, it’s essential to build a work culture that stimulates productivity and wins loyalty. And it takes more than just money to do that.?

5 Ways to Motivate Blue Collar Workers Without Money

1. Use the Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne Effect refers to the idea that people modify their behavior if they know that they’re being observed.?

The Hawthorne experiments were conducted by the National Research Council to investigate how lighting affects worker productivity. The experiments showed that it wasn’t the working conditions that improved productivity levels, but the fact that the workers knew that they were being watched.?

Monitoring your blue collar workers’ performance can help increase motivation and productivity because it holds your employees accountable.?

This is where the importance of continuous performance management comes into play. Instead of infrequent check-ins in the form of annual or quarterly reviews, it’s crucial to track your team’s performance data on a day-to-day basis.?

Learn more about performance management for blue collar workers:

→ Why Performance Reviews Are Important for Hourly Workers

→ Employee Performance Management Process: Best Practices

1. Improve Working Conditions

Blue collar jobs often come with a physically demanding work environment. Your hourly workers may have to spend long hours on their feet performing repetitive tasks or serving customers. There is a raised risk of injury, and your workforce may struggle with fatigue or burnout.?

To increase employee engagement, it’s important to create quality working conditions for your blue collar workers. In addition to helping you prevent long-term health issues, providing better work conditions is also going to motivate your employees to perform better. Here are a few things you can do ??

• Invest in functional equipment. Make sure that your blue collar workers have access to quality machinery, tools, and safety gear. Having to deal with faulty equipment on a regular basis will make your employees feel frustrated and unappreciated, which will naturally decrease their motivation and performance.
• Improve policies and procedures. Regularly assess employee behavior trends to figure out ways to reduce mistakes and improve workplace output. Secchi generates instant performance reviews that help you identify patterns and build a more engaged workforce.
• Listen to your workers. At the end of the day, your employees know best what’d make their working conditions better. Pulse surveys and face-to-face meetings are great employee engagement strategies that’ll help you figure out how to improve your work environment.?

The bottom line is, your blue collar workers will feel motivated to work more & better if their work conditions are enjoyable.?

1. Offer Career Development Opportunities

Many blue collar workers are interested in growing their skill set and advancing their careers. In fact, research shows that 89% of hourly employees believe that career development opportunities are important for job satisfaction, and 87% of them like to be challenged.?

Blue collar jobs are growing in demand, and an increasing number of professional development opportunities are becoming available.?

To remain competitive, offer ways for your blue collar employees to improve and expand their skills, such as mentorship programs and upskill/reskill programs.?

Investing in your workforce’s development will not only improve employee satisfaction, but will also help you build a stronger and multi-skilled team. It will facilitate teamwork, make it easier to fill roles internally, and improve performance outcomes.?

1. Build Better Company Culture

Working in an environment where people are happy is motivating. If your workers are surrounded by peers who are excited to show up for their shifts and get to work, it’ll naturally boost team morale and productivity. In contrast, if your workers are unhappy, tense, and frustrated, engaging employees is going to be challenging.?

To improve company culture, experiment with:?

• Giving your workers more control over their work schedule. Hourly workers want more flexibility, with 42% of them claiming that not having a flexible schedule makes them more likely to leave their job. While it may not be possible to give your workforce full autonomy over their schedule, even small adjustments can make a big difference.
• Helping your employees build stronger relationships with each other. Knowing that the people on their team see and appreciate the work they do can motivate blue collar workers to perform better. Incorporate peer-to-peer recognition into your company culture for better engagement.
• Improving communication. The constantly shifting nature of blue collar work can make communication between supervisors and employees challenging. 97% of employees believe that communication impacts task efficiency on a daily basis. Secchi removes barriers to team communication with a text-messaging feature.?

Building motivating and inspiring company culture is a task that requires continuous effort. Focus on small and consistent steps to start seeing a positive difference.?

1. Recognize Meaningfully and Often

80% of employees would work harder if they felt better appreciated. Employee recognition is a strong driver for blue collar workers, but it’s important to focus on meaningful and consistent recognition for your efforts to have the desired effect. Throwing a rushed pizza party or making surface-level comments in a quarterly meeting are not effective employee engagement strategies.?

For best results, integrate employee recognition into your day-to-day operations.?

Interactive scoreboards and intentional verbal recognition are just some of the ways to meaningfully recognize your employees. Gamifying employee rewards is another way to creatively motivate your blue collar workers.?

Motivate Blue Collar Workers with Secchi?

Effectively motivating blue collar employees starts with having a clear and functional hourly performance management system in place. Secchi is a software that simplifies the performance management process for operations managers, HR professionals, and frontline leaders with instant performance data and enhanced communication.?

Request a demo today to learn how Secchi can help you motivate your blue collar employees.