"People don't change their behaviour unless it makes a difference for them to do so."
Employee motivation is important and glad to know that the government ministries are also focusing on this.
To be a little honest, gone are the days of "One size fits all".
Today's is the age of tailor-made and custom-made solutions. To the extent that even schemes are now-a-days tailor made to some extent.
One of the simplest and most basic things one can do is -
Tailor make the salary structure for your staff.
Ok, I know it is lengthy and involves too much of work. But what you can do is, list a few company approved allowances or benefits which can be so adjusted to
allow the person to have better in-hand and save tax. As is always said by tax advisors that saving tax perse and tax planning is not a crime. For eg: giving a child education allowance of 200 Rs to a person who is not even engaged yet, is not going to motivate him/her. Instead
we can re-frame the same allowance as say mobile expense reimbursement or food allowance or something similar.
Since you belong to government ministry, I believe you must be giving something as food allowance. I think you should
split your food allowance as --> Fixed money part and some meal vouchers like sodexo.
Giving meal vouchers has advantage - they are tax free. But ensure to educate your staff before you bring in this change else they would be demotivated that their food allowance has been reduced. Also whilst choosing a meal voucher, choose for the one that is accepted at many places and even at groceries store. Eg: Sodexo is accepted even by food bazar to buy daily groceries or any food item.
Apart from this, you can also start many engagement activities lilke -
1. A picnic or an o uting
2. Celebrating certain days at office like Holi, Diwali, Dushhera. As simple as celebrating the 9 days of Navratri by asking the staff to dress in the color pattern.
3.
Appreciating small small tasks done by them. Say for eg if you find that XYZ has not taken even a single leave in this month, you can appreciate the efforts and give him recognition in front of the staff.
4. If someone is on leave for sick or medical reason or has taken a leave to take care of family member, try to ask if they're well when they resume. It's a basic human nature but not practiced with office colleagues especially when they're not in same department or the one's who are reporting to us. It won't make us look low, but it would make us look better.
5. Try to do some environmental activity together. Eg: recently there was world's health day - 7th april - you could have arranged for a dietician who could have shared the benefits of a healthy life.
6.
Check your work-life balance scheme.
7. Do the employee satisfaction survey and try to figure out what is wrong. Or as an hr, engage yourself in a friendly chat with most of the people to know where the shoe is pinching them. (Get some tips from
How to Monitor Employee Motivation, Satisfaction & Performance | Chron.com)
8. Most important and often neglected -
Appreciate an idea or any suggesstion that is being made by some one. Most often people (either in public or in private sectors) do not make any new suggestion out of the fear that it would either go unheard, or would be mocked off, or simply would get a message - "How much do you know about the industry. I have better experience than you. Please don't bother to teach me" This might not be the literal reply, but your body language and indirect message conveys this.
Be open to new ideas.
9. Check on the
level of office politics, groupism, etc. Look out for team building activities and
encourage inter-departmental team building.
10. Trust them, their capabilities and give them jobs that match not only to the level of their education / qualification / experience but also to their skill sets.
11. The power of acknowledgement is often under-rated. Ensure that you give
TRUE acknowledgement / appreciation (
Timely,
Responsive,
Unconditional &
Enthusiastic) to people.
12. Check your organizational culture. with changing time, these days we need a culture which is
Open, Flexible, Caring as well as Fair.
I checked a similar discussion - pls chk
Head / VP / GM - HR
Hope this helps you solve your query