The importance of motivation is often under-estimated and I would also venture to say that it's the least understood knowledge area among people who hold vital leadership roles within an organization. Being proficient at motivating your employees will, without a doubt, be a measure of your success as a leader. From my perspective, this is one key performance indicator (KPI) that should be on any leader's dashboard!

Before we learn how to motivate employees, it's important to take some time to understand why we need to motivate employees! Why, because when we comprehend the why of something, we are in a better position to elucidate the how, which increases our chances to actually motivate our employees. Therefore, understanding why you need to learn about employee motivation will naturally increase your motivational skills. Now that you understand the why of the why, let's continue...

Why is motivation important?

Motivation is important simply because it allows you as a leader to meet and even exceed your own organizational goals! After all, that's the whole point of leading, isn't it? In fact, without a motivated workforce, your organization will be in a very precarious position. Once at this intersection, there are only two possible final destinations: bankruptcy or fix the motivational issues among your workforce. Eventually, one or the other will prevail!

Benefits of a motivated workforce

There are numerous benefits of having motivated employees:
• Cost savings: Motivated employees will not only work faster, but they will use their creativity to recommend process improvements that can lead to millions of dollars of saving for your organization.
• Increased quality: Motivated employees will produce quality products, costing you less resources for rework.
• Reduced turn over: Turn-over doesn't only cost you money to replace the individuals, but it also slows down your organization's progress while replacements are being trained.
• Speed to market: Everyone wants their product or services yesterday! Actually, the day you release your new product, people will already want a newer version! Having a motivated workforce will ensure that your product release cycle is reduced minimally.
• Increased product value: With motivated employees you will have a better product or service, because the staff will feel like this is their product and will want to make sure that it provides real value to the customers. They will go the extra mile to make your product stand out of from the competition!
• Contributing to a better society: Motivated employees make happy people, who in turn contribute to a better society.