The Puzzle of Motivation

"Don't let your profits walk out the door."

No matter what function they hold in your organization, top-performing employees are vital to the success of your business. Top performers are the employees who generate more sales, who make better decisions, who solve the difficult technical problems and who generally make life easier (and more profitable) for business owners.You definitely don't want to lose these people, but the truth is, they are not only valuable to you. They are also the types of employees most likely to be stolen away by your competitors. And they are much more expensive to replace! So how do you prevent them from taking the bait when headhunters start calling? According to research, there are five primary reasons that make employees stay with employers long term:

1. Challenging and interesting work


2. Opportunities to learn new skills and grow in their jobs


3. Good relationships with co-workers


4. Fair pay


5. A great boss

Now that you know what your top performers are looking for, you need to learn how you can give it to them. Doing this may be easier than you think. Here are five guidelines to follow.

1. Talk to your employees.While you may be nervous about the answer, the best way to find out what it will take for an employee to stay is to ask them outright. Once you've asked them, encourage them to list every factor that they can think of. It's rare that someone will say 'money' and stop there. Your real high performers are looking for growth, development and responsibility.


2. Challenge your employees with goals.Although a great boss is last on the list of what employees are looking for, it is primarily this person who can influence all of the other factors. Hence the need for good, effective management. In your position as a leader, you have the opportunity to set goals for your employees that help both of you realize a shared vision for the company. Ongoing discussion about these expectations will help to ensure that employees are inspired and positively motivated to work toward these goals.


3. Don't micro-manage.Top performers will rebel if you try to micro-manage them. Most top-performing employees need the flexibility and independence to make their own decisions. When businesses create a bureaucracy of rules and procedures which takes autonomy away from people, in time they create working environment where even though they say they respect people, they don't demonstrate that they trust them. And a lack of trust is a sure way to drive people away.


4. Keep the lines of communication open.As your company grows bigger, you must find ways to continue to communicate. Employees will start to feel separated from your business if they're hearing about major company changes through the grapevine, or reading about them in the newspaper, rather than getting it first-hand from their internal leaders. That means setting up a very efficient information flow from the top down, making sure that communication is accurate through each level. They should hear it from you first.


5. Recognize the importance of your company culture.Developing a company culture that top performers want to be involved in also is critical to retaining them. Employees will remain in a work environment where they feel they are contributing and building something that is bigger than them. Together with the team, get everyone to buy into and evolve that culture. The culture dictated from above becomes a meaningless mission statement. A culture that has benefits for the people in it, motivates and rewards everybody is what then drives your success.

Insightlink offers a variety of professional services that can help organizations both improve employee satisfaction and evaluate their reasons for leaving. Our services include:

Insightlink's 4Cs Employee Survey - a comprehensive diagnostic tool to determine how your employees feel on all 4Cs of employee satisfaction: Communications, Culture, Commitment and Compensation.

Insightlink's Exit Survey System - a powerful online exit survey management tool that provides survey results in real time and the ability to create aggregate summaries as needed.

Employee Engagement & Fringe Benefits

Looking for cheap ways to offer fringe benefits to encourage employee engagement? A CPA offers tips for using fringe benefits as an income substitute during the economic downturn.

Many businesses are foregoing salary increases this year because of the economic downturn. How does a business find and retain employees, as well as keep up morale, in the face of this reality? The combined use of fringe benefits and the tax law can help. Some attractive fringe benefits may be provided tax-free to employees and at little cost to employers.

De minimis fringe benefits

A de minimis fringe benefit is any property or service whose value is so small or minimal that accounting for it would be administratively impracticable. Such benefits are excluded from an employee's gross income. Examples of de minimis fringe benefits include:

Occasional overtime meals and meal money. To qualify as a tax-free de minimis fringe benefit, the meal or meal money must be provided to your employees so that they can extend their normal workday, thereby enabling them to work overtime. Such meals and meal money can only be provided occasionally. This means that they generally cannot be provided routinely, when overtime work is a common occurrence or are contractually mandated for overtime work. Occasional snacks may also qualify as a de minimis fringe benefit but if the snacks are provided daily, they would not qualify.

Occasional transportation. Transportation costs can also qualify as de minimis fringe benefits. Taxi-fare for an employee to return home after working late, for example, may be a de minimis fringe benefit. The transportation must be occasional.

Holiday gifts. Traditional holiday gifts, such as a Thanksgiving turkey, with a low fair market value can generally qualify as a de minimis fringe benefit. However, cash or a cash equivalent such as a gift certificate in lieu of the property, do not qualify. In fact, cash and cash equivalent fringe benefits, no matter how little, are never excludable as a de minimis fringe benefit, except for occasional meal money or transportation fare.

E-filing. Electronically filing an employee's tax return, but not paying for someone to prepare the return, may qualify as a de minimus fringe benefit.

Telephone calls. An employer may treat the cost of local telephone calls made by employees as a de minimis fringe benefit.

Working condition fringe benefits. A working condition fringe benefit is any type of property or service provided to your employees to the extent that the cost of such property or services would have been deductible by the employee as a trade or business expense, depreciation expenses, or as if the employee paid for the property/services himself or herself. Working condition fringe benefits have special tax rules for employers and employees.

Vehicles. If an employer-provided vehicle is used 100 percent for business and the use is substantiated, use of the vehicle is considered a working condition fringe
benefit. The value of use of the vehicle is not included in the employee's wages. However, when an employer-provided vehicle is used by the employee for both personal and business purposes, an allocation between the two types must be made. The portion allocable to the employee's personal use is generally taxable to the employee as a fringe benefit. The portion allocable to business use is generally considered a working condition fringe benefit and is excludable from
the employee's income.

No additional cost services. If an employer-provided service does not cause the employer to incur any substantial additional costs, it may qualify as a "no additional cost service" and be excludible from the employee's income. The service must be offered to customers in the employer's ordinary course of business. Some of the
most common examples are airline, rail and bus tickets and hotel and motel rooms provided at a reduced rate or at no cost to employees. This benefit can be offered to retired employees as well as active employees. There are special rules for highly-compensated employees.

Encouraging Recognition Every Day Boosts Employee Engagement

Sometimes clients tell us their senior management is resistant to employee surevys because they do not want to hear the results. They think that, when it comes to retaining key staff, money is what it's about. Extra money might get employees to stay on for a while, longer than they might otherwise, but they are ultimately going to leave if they don’t feel valued and engaged. Below are three keys to keep in mind in order to leverage the motivational power of recognition programs:

• Recognition is most effective when it is used on a regular and consistent basis -- like a day-to-day part of the culture
• Encouraging employees to give positive praise to one another builds mutual respect and leads to higher overall employee engagement
• The more senior and powerful an individual, the greater the impact of their own behavior for better or worse. The way senior managers conduct themselves every day has a major impact on organizational culture

So what have you done to recognize your colleagues today? Your day-to-day behavior can make a difference in the employee engagement levels of those around you.