Motivating Employees to Higher Performance: Leveraging Employees Through Creating, Improving, or Revising Employee Programs Through Servant Leadership

As the uncertainties of the nation’s future is hanging in the balance, it’s important that Servant Leaders build their companies to produce higher quality and increase performance measures; this is in effort to stay relevant and noticed while maintaining a consistent competitive advantage.? One way to improve is to leverage our employee population. We must utilize their talents, skillsets, advanced qualities in a way that is meaningful to them and our companies.? We must leverage the multicultural disciplinary approach to collaboration, to leadership, and to culture. How can we motivate our employees to perform at even higher levels? We do so by having a very attractive, competitive employee benefits package. We do so by creating avenues and streamlines for corporate education, which will help them in personal and professional development.

As Servant Leaders, we aren’t afraid to let our employees have the limelight, to be noticed and to show our appreciation for their invaluable, indispensable input in our company’s growth and development. Another way to leverage employees’ contributions is to allow them to make decisions. Trusting their decision-making is pivotal to how much they're willing and ready to help us help our companies (evidence of a strong corporate culture). Enforcing that Upper and Middle Level Leaders learn to delegate work responsibilities will give employees’ a feeling that they’re an integral part of the company’s success. Allowing for their opinions to be present and accounted are a part of a larger compilation of accessible corporate tools to higher production and increased performance. Conducting bi-weekly meetings that focus on brainstorming and process improvement will help to open the stream of collaboration and participation in the inner workings of our businesses. Training employees to be leaders by creating leadership programs that foster promoting from within our companies will help us in our employee retention efforts.

Employees are more likely to stay and be involved, having a higher sense of appreciation and realizing their value is recognized will motivate them to perform at optimal levels. Sharing in the decision-making will give them a since of ownership and autonomy in the company and therefore they will vest more in us when we vest more into them. Creating a task force within our HR departments that focus solely on measuring the company’s growth through the emphasis of employer-employee contribution. Making it measurable will ensure that the company is on the right track for success in managing every annual operating goal. The company’s annual operating protocol should include forecasting employee retention. HR should review the employee programs, benefits, quarterly as opposed to annually. Employee Appreciation should be included within the year, at least 2-3 times per year as opposed to one time, annually.

Employees need recognition to know they’re appreciated. They also need adequate compensation and accommodation.? Companies need to allocate funds to corporate outings where employees can learn about each other, connecting through their uniqueness and commonalties to further develop and practice a positive company culture that motivates, inspires, and empowers employees' camaraderie. There should be award ceremonies, gift cards, one free day off or even a half-day off, gas cards, free water, competitive pay increases, and other incentives that will further drive our devotional efforts to show our appreciation, as Servant Leaders, to our employees.

Our thankfulness should be exuded through tangible and intangible gifts. Employees are more comfortable with participating with transparent leaders, those who are personable yet professional. Leaders who are down-to-Earth, relatable, authentic with organic personalities prove to be very appealing to employees. Their actions should speak louder than their words.

If we invest, now, in our employees, the payoff will be astronomical because our companies’ performance, efficiency, efficacy, innovative and creative efforts will produce a greater financial outcome.

Think about it: if our employees are undervalued and unappreciated, they’ll be less likely to want to go above-and-beyond their normal duties, their performance would show barely meeting business goals and they will always present one-foot-out-the-door, always searching for a new position, which consumes their minds [while at work for us]; this would cause depression, anxiety, undue frustration and animosity towards their leadership, the company as-a-whole, which would result in low or slow performance outcomes which then negatively impacts our bottom line because our customers would feel the backlash of how we operate, causing diminishing returns.

Servant Leaders need to make conscious efforts to create, improve, revise our employee programs so that our employees know their worth is important to us; they need to feel a sense of security within our appreciation, we exude this by investing in our employees which will then reciprocate back to us through higher financial outcomes and customer or client satisfaction. It’s the Circle of Life, at least it should be considered as such, for a company’s success at managing its business, from the inside out. If the culture is founded, established upon the precedent of showing appreciation and being authentic as well as transparent then beyond a doubt, it would cause a greater return on investment, a healthier company because of healthier employees.