FinExecutive Russia website 2019-11-25

7 ways to make boring work more interesting

Let's say you love the company you work for and your colleagues, but you no longer love your job. At least, not as much as they loved her when it all just began. More and more often there is a feeling of stagnation and a desire to move on. It happens. And even if you're already seriously considering quitting, it might be worth it first to make some efforts to perk up and breathe new life into your current role, even if only temporarily. After all, work shouldn't make you sleepy.

1. Create a new project

Start by identifying a part of your work that needs to be replaced or a problem that can be solved. Is there something that you've been doing the same way for ages (because that's the way it is) that could be optimized?

Once you have an idea, pitch it to your boss and tell him you'd be happy to bring it to life. You will enjoy developing and implementing something new. Even if there is no particular need for this initiative, your colleagues will be pleasantly surprised that you took it on.

2. Take on more responsibilities

Don't want to reinvent the wheel or don't have the resources to start your own business? - offer your help in an existing project or add another one to your responsibilities.

If you want to load yourself up with work for a change, but you're not sure how to fit it into your daily routine, take this idea: Wake up early once a week to do the work that inspires you. This will allow you to take on new tasks and spend more time searching for ideas for future projects and initiatives. Think about how useful this will be for your career the second (okay, fourth) time you're tempted to tap "Later" on your alarm clock screen.

There are so many online and offline resources to learn something new. Suddenly, you discover that you have a passion for graphic design, writing, public speaking, or something else entirely. Take your education and use your newly acquired skills on the job or improve the way you do what you already do.

4. Ask for a raise

Don’t expect your boss to promote you over time anyway; you often have to raise this issue yourself. Therefore, if it’s time for the next annual report, it’s worth making an appointment with your manager. Of course, asking for a raise or bonus directly can be extremely unpleasant, but it is worth it. At best, you will get what you ask for. At worst, you won’t receive a higher salary or bonuses, but you will practice your self-defense skills.

Social media isn't just important when you're looking for a new job. At every stage of your career, you can take on other people's plans and ideas. Invite a coworker you don't interact with often for lunch or coffee. Getting to know your colleagues better will help you feel like you're working in a new place (without having to relearn names and titles). Plus, you'll be able to make new friends, which will make your work day more fun.

6. Drain your swamp

Kate White, a correspondent for The Muse, former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, and author of I Shouldn't Tell You That... writes about the value of "draining the swamp." She is referring to the fact that sometimes people are so busy with their work that they don't take into account the big picture or think about the future.

White recommends dedicating an hour each week to draining the swamp. This includes corresponding with patrons and sponsors, attending events, and thinking about your career trajectory. Create and follow a plan to focus on actions that will help you advance your career.

7. Work for seven

Be bold and change your work environment. White writes that you can't just follow your list of responsibilities: to stand out from the rest and achieve success, you need to work for seven.

To spice up your work, be better, cooler, bolder. Make your boss say “Wow!” about your work done. For example, come up with an innovative idea for a project and express it at a general meeting. Your colleagues will be pleasantly surprised, and you will be tasked with drawing up a strategy for its implementation.

It is quite normal if over time you lose interest in your work. However, it is within your power to start enjoying your next working day again. To do this, simply find or create new opportunities, and in addition you can learn something more (and earn more).

Besides relationships with loved ones, another area where people struggle to maintain respect is at work. Some people have to work in environments where they are not appreciated or appreciated. It happens that the best compliment from a boss is when he doesn’t say anything, and if he does, it’s only to point out mistakes. Have you encountered a similar situation?
What continues to be an incentive if the work does not satisfy? You can find the answer by asking yourself: “What can I do to make work interesting? How can I give it meaning?” There are many ways to stimulate yourself daily. Richard Kelly is an example of how you can find meaning and success in your work, regardless of position or salary. He worked in a supermarket near Chicago for 35 years and never rose above the position of bagger in the grocery department. Here's an article about this man that might inspire you.

One American's life principle: work and be useful The concept of “success” has many meanings. Ask someone about to leave their job as a grocery bagger.
Business America is a flattering, goal-seeking, ruthless America; devalued, overcrowded, trading, indifferent America - could certainly learn from Richard Kelly. For starters, he is living proof that social status and good money are not necessarily the only indicator of success in business. Kelly, who will soon be 60, worked more than 35 years at a supermarket in an affluent Chicago suburb and never rose through the ranks beyond a grocery bagger.

Smiling, energetic, with an old-fashioned work ethic that rewarded politeness and dedication, he became the most respected packer in the area. One day, a rival firm unsuccessfully tried to lure him away with the promise of shorter hours and higher wages. Customer Pat Nufer always looked up to him as an example to her children. When manager Trey Johnson learned that Kelly was planning to retire, he was sincerely concerned that without this humble but popular man who brings a warm personal charm to our mechanized world, the company's income will fall.

Kelly remembers the names of all customers and treats the children! sweets and is always ready to pick up a dropped glove or hold a crying baby while the mother searches for the car keys in her purse. Johnson, who wasn't around when Kelly packed his first can of meat there, recalled what one regular customer said about Kelly: "I can't say anything definitive, but he's a wonderful person." What is Kelly's secret to success? He doesn't just stack the food so that the eggs and bread are on top, he packs them carefully and tightly. He does this so that the package does not fall apart in the trunk of the car on the way home. Even better than her business, Kelly knows people. In a job where seniority is measured in months rather than decades, and where a regular customer is someone who has bought a beer or two, Kelly has spent his entire life here. He knows the customers, their children and grandchildren, their successes and failures.

The only thing he didn’t do was take the purchases to the parking lot. He looked after his clients' houses when they... were away, cleaning gutters, washing the foundations of houses and even taking a sick person to the hospital. “People usually look down on this kind of work,” Kelly said, “but whatever your hands have to do, try to do it the best you can. This is what is written in Ecclesiastes. I may not do it as well as others, but I try my best.”

Kelly was modest, but not stupid. In 1956, he worked as a night shift orderly at a Veterans Administration hospital. His wife was pregnant with their first child, and they needed money to pay for the birth. So Kelly turned to his former reservist company commander, who had become a supermarket manager in civilian life, for help. A few months later, Kelly began working in the store's warehouse.

At first, he only intended to stay here to save up money to pay the hospital bill, but then it occurred to him that by keeping both jobs, he could buy a house. He bought it that same year, but didn’t quit.

Over the years, Kelly has purchased seven homes that he rents out. He founded a company for cultivating plots of land, but continued to work in a supermarket during the day and in a hospital at night. This continued until last year when he left the hospital. Kelly cleaned drainage ditches and did other odd jobs, mostly for people he met at the store.

Working behind the counter for many years contributed to the formation of his simple but very useful ideas about how to succeed; a philosophy that could earn him fame as a highly paid consultant. Here are some of his thoughts: “Little things make a big difference. If a woman drops her keys, you try to pick them up. If my wife came to the store, I would want someone to help her put her shopping in the car, and to do it selflessly.

Today many people want to have money without doing anything. They strive to get a position, but do not want to work. If I don't get hired, I can't blame anyone but myself. I create problems myself and solve them myself.”

As Kelly prepared to leave work, he said, “I have something to do. Many older people need help. I guess I’ll go outside and tell the boys about this, maybe I can make them think.” Kelly's customers, his friends, although they say they understand why he is leaving, are actually saddened. “Kelly is special,” said Debbie Anderson. - When my children were born, he was already working here. I have two of them - 12 and 9 years old, and they always look forward to us going to the store and them getting THEIR sweets.”

“If Kelly leaves, then we leave,” another shopper joked. “For 26 years now, he has been helping us put our shopping in the car and taking care of our children. One day one of my children spoke disapprovingly of his work. I said, 'Take your time! Kelly is doing something important, and he's one of the nicest people I've ever met. He'll never be replaced.'"

Of course, Richard Kelly turned a job that was not considered prestigious into one of the most important in the company. He is a shining example of the fact that true professionalism does not depend on position. Another person who did the same is Leslie; secretary of Tom Peters, a famous writer and brilliant lecturer. In one of his interesting articles, he described her this way: “I have never read her autobiography. She may well have had a degree in nuclear physics from Caltech, or she may not have even completed college. But she changed a lot in our company and did it with great skill.”

Petere continues to praise Leslie, describing her work style as "easy-going, polite, cheerful, patient, honest, professional, energetic, thorough," etc. He says that Leslie takes on extra work just to be helpful : “How much can one person do to change the atmosphere in a company. Everything depends on his energy of enthusiasm, and not on the position he holds.”

Both Leslie and Richard Kelly are excellent examples of where interest in work comes from, how important it is for success to be able to flirt - to establish warm, trusting and sincere relationships, cultivating a sense of self-respect in oneself and in others.

There are several people whose lectures, stories and videos I always listen to, read, and watch. One of them is Ludwig Bystronovsky, art director at Lebedev Studio. Today he gave a cool story on the topic “How to organize your work so that it is interesting.” Here he is:

I took a little note of his story for myself so as not to lose it. This is not a transcript (despite the apparent connection), but a free retelling. Somewhere more accurate, somewhere less.

Three secrets

Toastmaster is not needed

The first secret to becoming interested is that you don't have to try hard. Because then you will kill interest. The emblem of all this is the toastmaster, because he is a professional in creating interest, who manages to crap himself almost always. You don't have to entertain people to make them interested.

It’s similar to when you ask yourself the question: “How can I make myself more interesting?” And the more you think about it, the more boring everything becomes.

It always seems to us that something interesting is “out there somewhere.” The first solution that the brain offers when work becomes uninteresting is to change it. I know that everyone thinks that children have the most interesting lives in the world. Everything was so interesting then. I still remember this cry: “Guys, a pipe burst in the basement! Let's run!"

Kassil writes interestingly in the book “Conduit and Schwambrania”. The children were put in a corner there, they stand and make plans on how they can escape from home. And this is what he writes:

All five parts of the world were owned by adults. They controlled history, rode on horseback, hunted, commanded ships, smoked, made real things, fought, loved, saved, played chess... and the children stood in the corner.

It seems to children that the most interesting life is that of adults. And the secret is that it always seems to you that the most interesting life is somewhere there, around the corner, but not here. But in reality, the most interesting thing is always here. You just need to understand how to see it. Going somewhere else is like changing the channel on TV. It'll get boring anyway. A few paragraphs later from Kassil:

And suddenly, a dazzling idea hit my head. It pierced the darkness of the “first aid kit” like lightning, and I was not surprised to hear the thunder that soon followed (later it turned out that it was Annushka who dropped the baking sheet in the kitchen).

There was no need to run anywhere, no need to look for the promised land. She was here, next to us. She just had to invent it. I've already seen her in the dark. Over there, where the door to the restroom is, there are palm trees, ships, palaces, mountains...

And the children just started inventing interesting things for themselves here.

The thing is, you can't always use your beginner's brain. We are created in such a way that when we find ourselves in a new environment, we greedily absorb sensations. You feel cool there not because it’s cool, but because it’s new.

Reduce tension

Evolution encourages solving complex problems. To make it interesting, you need a difficult task. If you understand how to solve a problem, you are not interested in it. You need a problem that you don’t yet understand how to solve. This is one of the principles of the studio - you can take a person who has never solved a similar problem and let him solve it. “Oh my God, this is not a graphic designer, how can he draw a logo?!” Yes, that's it.

People always say: “Oh my God, how can I go there! I don’t know anything there!” Great! So that’s the way for us to go.

But there is a problem. When we take on a difficult task, it seems to us that we need to sit 24 hours a day and solve it. The task is difficult. But that's not true. You need to relieve tension. People don't know this, and if they don't succeed, they push harder.

The main thing you need to plan into your daily schedule, the thing you're bound to forget otherwise, is a break. Because it helps reduce stress. Because the best ideas come from a clear mind. This doesn't mean you have to lie on the couch 12 hours a day. This means getting up, stretching, changing your occupation.

To reduce stress, for example, getting rid of deadlines helps. Instead of thinking that you can and should sit down and do a gigantic task, you should set up a pipeline. Because in the first case, you will always postpone this task until the very end. You need to do a little bit of it every day.

They say to me: “How can that be! It takes a lot of time to understand the problem!” And here's what I noticed. Often 15-20 minutes are enough to roughly understand the task so that some unit of meaning appears. At this point, the task can be postponed. Tomorrow you will be able to enter it even faster, spending 10 minutes, and another 10 to generate a new unit of meaning. And the day after tomorrow it will take two minutes to move in, leaving even more time for generating a new semantic unit. The secret is that pauses work.

- What about the state of flow?
- At some point I realized that my life was divided into two categories: the work that captured my attention, and the uninteresting garbage that followed. And I realized that work that has captured all your attention is cool, but you want to live a normal life. And I love the flow, it captivates me and that’s all. But I know that if I take a break and do some exercise, I will have an interesting day the rest of the day. I am forced to transfer the state of flow to everything else. And at some point it all starts to overwhelm you: the way you went and did the exercises, the fact that you decided to go eat, the way you came up with the idea of ​​taking the elevator today, etc.

- How to convince the customer that deadlines are not needed?
- This is the curse of modern industry. Instead of setting up a special day where you come and deliver your divine work and then shit yourself because the client says, “What the hell is this?”, it’s better to do it regularly. Just decide with the client that once a week, on a certain fish day, you will meet and show him what you have done. And this is not some finished result. And just what we did in a week. This way he can make edits as he goes along, and he'll enjoy it too. Plus, going to the second and subsequent meetings will no longer be scary at all, and changes will be accepted easily.

Cycles

To avoid getting bored, you need to switch your attention. And you can do this in a circle with a finite number of classes. This is how they make music videos, for example. The dudes shoot four scenes and at the end they have to get a four-minute clip. But if they show you a minute of each scene, you'll turn off halfway through the first minute. That’s why they cut them up in four seconds at a time and start slipping them in one by one. That's why you watch the entire clip to the end. Games with micro-games inside work in a similar way: defended the towers → leveled up the character → leveled up the towers → defended the towers.. The same cycle can be done at work.

But here you also need to choose the right tasks. Switching to lunch is a bad choice. There should always be a certain number of projects that you can switch to. People who, for example, have basketball on Tuesdays, do exactly this - they include some kind of variety in their cycle.

Answers to some questions about this part from the audience:

- How to set up a cycle when there is none from the very beginning?
- Naturally, you shouldn’t expect yourself to take your existing habits and switch to a new way of thinking. You have to slowly build everything up. It took me nine months. I made a schedule - I failed, I made another one - again. But then I noticed that there is one habit that is good and that I like. Great! I put it in the slot. This is how the first month passed. There's no rush, give yourself three years.

- What about subordinates? They don't have cycles.
- The main thing is not to fall into micro-control. Be honest with your subordinates: you need the work done, not how the subordinates work and when. Set exactly these conditions. And build cycles for yourself. When you can build a cycle for yourself, others will follow suit.

How to surprise

The unexpected needs to be planned for.

For something unexpected to happen, something must have been planned and it didn’t happen. Man is a prediction machine. He always tries to predict what will happen next. And when his predictions fail, then the surprise happens.

I'll tell you one story. We went to Altai to travel one day and got caught in heavy rain. The second night we sat around the fire and huddled together, trying to keep warm. And so, several old women, seasoned by campaigns, who were with us, said: “Guys! We have vodka!” We were all happy, because we drank all our vodka yesterday, and it was not planned that there would be more, but somehow we needed to warm up. They said: “We are just experienced and knew this would happen. So we took a spare bottle with us, and here it is.” We drank it happily. The next day the rain did not stop, and in the evening we sat and huddled in the same way. And these old ladies again: “Guys! We have vodka!” They themselves created the expectation for us that there would be no miracle a second time, saying that the previous bottle was the only one. Thus, by creating anticipation, they created surprise.

External generator

In addition to creating expectations for yourself, you can use an external generator. Something that gives you ideas. For me, for example, these are the stories with which I travel. Because I don’t know what I will talk about, and I ask the organizers: “What should I talk about?” And the answer for me is that very surprise. Some people use travel to unexpected places for this, others collect questions from people, poke random letters with them, and thus find topics for new stories. Therefore, it is useful to make sure that you have some kind of external source that throws up surprises.

How to be unexpected for yourself

There are, meanwhile, those guys who are difficult to surprise. Those who expect surprise. You can read books on this topic by those who are pros at this - military strategists. If you have enough attention and interest, read Luttwak’s book “Strategy. The logic of war and peace."

However, among all these guys there is one more who is completely impossible to surprise. It is you. Because you know all your habits, what you care about, how you think. If you can find a way to surprise yourself and can understand how this method works, then your life will flow like a fountain.

I noticed that all these stories about losing weight, all these new strategies for negotiations, doing business and other things revolve around one idea: “Wow, was it possible?” And you come to a friend and say: “Imagine! It turns out that it was possible! It works!". And the whole secret of your interest is that you saw something that you previously perceived as strange. Counterintuitive. It’s unnatural to interrupt the work process and somehow divide the working hour, but tomato timers work for many. And all the books in which you come across some strange technique stand out precisely because this technique is strange. And that’s why everyone talks about him like that.

The key to the fountain of interest is counterintuitiveness.

Example. I've been trying to quit Warcraft for a year. And no way. Well, it’s really very beautiful there, and all of them are these cycles with events, holidays, raids and so on. I deleted my account, somehow changed my email to something unknown to me with a huge long password. But it turned out that the support service could always fix everything based on my complaint. And then my friend gave me advice - to continue playing. But! Go to another server and do not join a new guild. It would seem counterintuitive, paradoxical. To quit the game, you need to continue playing. How come? But it turned out that it works. I calmly moved to the new server and since I had only one rule (not to join guilds), I easily followed it. Six months later I gave up and left.

The same story happened with the Trojan horse. To win, the guys packed up and left, leaving only the horse, but lifting the entire siege.

And I see that people whose life is in full swing put this principle into practice. They think differently not in relation to others, but in relation to themselves.

I find myself trying to change some of my habits. One of them is the love of sweets. I can't resist eating a piece of cake before bed. Not at all. And so, I decided that since it’s all going on like this, I need to look at it from a different angle. I bought myself dried apricots, bought prunes, chocolate, and broke everything into pieces. I took dried apricots, prunes, a piece of chocolate and put them in the refrigerator to eat in the morning. And when I got up every morning, the first thing I did was eat them. And then, when in the evening I realized that I was going for the cake again, I said to myself: “Stop! You will definitely have something sweet in the morning. You don’t have to eat now, but wait a little and eat in the morning.” And it works. It turns out that you are getting rid of this habit of eating sweets. Then, after a couple of months, dried apricots and prunes are not so needed.

Another classic example is the Fosberry flop. It also arose as a counterintuitive idea.

And such decisions will always seem wild. Because if it were not so, someone would have already used them before you.

The main thing is to avoid starting to apply the solution found everywhere. If there is a cook who doesn't know how to write a book about 300 ways to cook food, then he can write about 300 ways to ruin food. And they will buy such a book. Everyone knows about the methods, but here it’s about how to ruin it! This is both interesting to write and to read. But if he then writes about 300 ways to ruin drinks, it’s a failure. A similar thing happened with Agile. Everyone was running around with him, with all these sprints and cards. And in the end, for those who tried it all, it still turned into dull crap. It doesn't work that way.

It is also worth being honest not only with yourself, but also with the client. I come and tell the client: “Listen, why should we, as developers, be interested? Where is our courage? Let's think about it? And at first, yes, there is a wave of indignation, but then it subsides and on the other side there is an understanding that if we are interested, the product will turn out better, everyone will enjoy it.

The worst feeling is when you watch a presentation from a company and think: “Damn, this same idea came to my mind six months ago!” Yes. It’s just that some people know that counterintuitiveness needs to be pushed, while others don’t. And you didn’t make this decision precisely because it contradicted your intuition.

For example. They come to me with a problem: “People are not interested in working at the company.” Okay, let's describe how the company works. “Well, people come to the company, they are specialists in their field...”. And here I give the first version: “Why do they have the same profession? Let's make it possible to choose a second profession. Here you are a programmer, but you still need to choose one profession that you will learn on Fridays.” This is wild! Who the hell needs this? But remember Google. Everyone walked around and said: “Oh, at Google everyone can spend 20% of their time working on their project!” It's wild. But it works.

Answers to some questions about this part from the audience:

- How to distinguish a cool, non-intuitive solution from complete nonsense?
- You can justify a cool decision. Brad - no. Remember the Fosberry flop. It could be justified from a physics point of view. As a last resort, you can always test. In Hollywood, for example, films and TV series are not made just like that. First, a small pilot is filmed on which the idea can be tested.

Mix

In total, I use a mix of techniques.

• In order for me to become interested, I need several tasks that I will switch in my head. These tasks must be challenging. But I shouldn't overexert myself.
• To do this, I reduce the tension. I have different timers, different relaxation methods, a little sports, a little travel.
• I use a surprise generator and make sure that there is always something in my life that I cannot control and that gives me new topics.
• I try to solve complex problems in a counterintuitive way.
• And most importantly, I try not to focus on the fact that I'm doing this because I'm not interested. And I try to focus on the fact that this solves my problems. Because otherwise everything will fall apart.

Answers to some questions about this part from the audience:

- What should programmers do? You don’t want to lose the flow.
- I'm a lousy programmer, but I know that in programming you can try everything very quickly. You changed the line, tried, changed, tried, changed... And that’s why it’s addictive. I realized that programming on paper works for me. I first write down what I will do, and then I get to work. “Oh, here you can write a different sorting and it will be cool!” Okay man, it will happen. But not now, it’s not on the paper. I'll write that down next time next time.

- What to do with micro-control outside?
- Everything will change if you give people confidence that you are a big boy. This kind of microcontrol doesn't just happen, let's be honest with each other. It appears because you miss deadlines. Don't miss deadlines and there will be no micromanagement.

10 best motivations for sports

Even if you are far from a sports lifestyle, no, no, and even think about morning jogging or a membership to a fitness club. But these thoughts do not always become material. What prevents you from starting to exercise regularly and not looking for reasons to skip workouts?

Yulia Piliguzova

Previously, showing off on the honor roll was the ultimate dream of every Soviet worker. A beautiful photo from which the hero smiled proudly, having exceeded the plan - such a prospect was tantamount to a modern-day appearance on the cover of Forbes magazine. In this way, they made it clear that the person worked for a reason, his work was noted, praised and they were ready to honor the hero of the editorial until his result overthrew the new factory Hercules. There were also “black” boards - pictures of shame, wall newspapers, where rowdies, truants, and drunkards were hung for educational purposes, and of course, they tried to capture them on these photographs in the most obscene form.

Today, for some reason, the most popular method of non-material motivation has become an obsessive corporate culture. Colleagues are gathered for trainings, forced to celebrate memorable dates together, and mass cultural outings are organized. All this is good, but when an eternally oppressive atmosphere reigns in the organization itself, rare corporate parties, even with cheerful songs by the invited favorite (boss) group, will not save you. But you need to keep an eye on the mood and motivation of employees!

Despite the fact that today the best motivation for employees is traditionally a generous bonus and corporate culture, managers, not lacking in imagination, manage to come up with new budget-friendly ways to motivate employees. After all, happiness is not always hidden at the bottom of an envelope with money; many owners of highly paid professions suffer, for example, because they were underestimated somewhere, misunderstood, or not assigned an interesting task. Yes, even under the mask of a careerist there can be a subtle spiritual organization that simply craves praise, attention or an extraordinary vacation.

Plunging into the world of “high” managers, you can find many interesting examples of finding new ways to make their employees happy. For example, the thoughts of the father of modern animation Walt Disney (Walt Disney) were busy not only with colorful cartoons. His imagination was also enough to come up with new ways to motivate his company’s employees. He perfectly understood the needs and requirements of workers and knew perfectly well that people, regardless of the conditions of remuneration, are always happy to leave a job where it is not prestigious to work. Therefore, he personally turned non-prestigious jobs into prestigious ones. Thus, laundry services at Disney amusement park hotels, which were unpopular among workers, were renamed textile services, which made them equal in importance to marketing or customer service. At the same time, getting a job in the textile service was much easier.

Philip Rosedale ( Philip Rosedale), the founder of the most famous three-dimensional social network Second Life, came up with the idea of ​​introducing an internal software platform into the company - a kind of unit for collecting employee feedback about their colleagues. In this program, everyone could send each other notes of appreciation and encouragement. All messages are posted in the public domain, so this system for collecting information about employee performance has become a good tool for management in the job evaluation system.

Here's a marketing company Hime & Co, in turn, gladly supports the spiritual impulses of its employees. For example, management freely allows employees to take time off for half the working day, but only if there is a good reason for it. By the way, these include visiting seasonal sales. Of course, purchasing stylish new clothes for the new fashion season is a sacred thing; you don’t even have to go to work. And if your partner suddenly leaves you (husband, boyfriend - it doesn’t matter), then you will be given a day off for the whole day to heal your mental wound: have a good cry and come to your senses.

Perhaps every large company has special ideas on how to make employees happy.

Here are 10 employee motivation ideas that you can try to implement in your company:

1. Publicly reward the merits of a distinguished employee.

2. Unexpected gifts, pleasant presents for employees, just in honor of the day of good mood.

3. If you can’t afford to pay a bonus, find a more budget-friendly way to reward merit. For example, give an employee an unscheduled day off.

4. You can set a free work schedule for your valuable employees from time to time.

5. Instead of a cash bonus, let employees choose their own prize.: say, dinner at a restaurant, a membership to a fitness club, some kind of gift certificate.

6. Organize a corporate sports retreat. This is not just relaxation, but the desire for sports victories and achievements. Today, corporate karting, yachting and football are especially in fashion. You can hold dance competitions.

7. Bonuses for those who take care of their health. For example, many Western companies pay employees annual bonuses for not being sick for a year and regularly visiting doctors.

8. Some companies not only reward the best, but also playfully punish the worst. For example, companies introduce the title “Turtle forever” or the “Get a Skunk” award.

9. Caring for the employee’s family. This could be vouchers for children to a health summer camp, preferential health insurance for an employee’s family. Tickets for concerts, performances...

10. Motivation through entertainment. Look at the offices of world-famous corporations, they are all equipped not just stylishly, but so that employees can work and relax as comfortably as possible, so that they want to come to work and do not want to leave. Such offices must have play areas, relaxation and entertainment rooms. 8 working hours would not be so effective if employees were not able to relax in time, relieve tension and simply change the environment to a more pleasant and informal one.

Yes, of course, it is unlikely that any non-material awards and incentives will be able to compete with Her Majesty’s salary in the power of motivation. But a manager should always remember that people usually come to work for money and a career, and leave because of routine and poor management. Therefore, creating an adequate system of non-material motivation is an important, even basic thing for creating an effective corporate Dream Team.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be involved in wonderful, inspiring, creative projects. The work of most people, one way or another, is connected with routine. Some people, due to their nature, tolerate this quite normally and even feel a certain comfort and safety. But there are people who have great difficulty enduring procedural work and onerous tasks. At the same time, for various reasons, they are forced to engage in them. If you can’t change your occupation right now, you can at least change your attitude towards your work.

By the way, even in interesting, creative work there can be moments of routine. For example, in my profession as a headhunter and coach, there is such a thing that exhausts me as negotiating contracts with contractors, preparing tender documentation, etc. But the following exercise really helps me get ready to do it.

This is a list of questions, the answers to which significantly change my attitude towards the task:

1) What is good/great about this task?
2) What am I interested in focusing my attention on first?
3) What do I intend to DO to achieve the desired result in it?
4) What am I going to CHANGE in my approach in order to achieve the desired result in it?
5) How can I have more fun while doing the things necessary to achieve my goals in this task?

I won’t say that the world is suddenly radically transformed, and I’m starting to madly love contract work, but it’s becoming much easier for me. How do you cope with routine tasks? How do you feel about routine in general?

I personally also like the “children’s” recipe. In addition to the survival instinct, the child is also driven by a huge interest in this world. Therefore, children are constantly on the move, always achieve what they want and at the same time are most often joyful and inspired. It is this interest that we adults need to borrow from children as a tool for a pleasant existence in this world.
Words such as “should”, “must”, “must”, “must” make us move forward, but do not bring joy and inspiration. But if we are truly interested in some kind of activity, then our talent for achievement blossoms magnificently and, moreover, we experience an emotional upsurge.
As neurophysiologists say, interest is what creates interhemispheric connections in the brain. Therefore, cool ideas come to us if we do something interesting for ourselves.

But interest can be created even in habitual activities! For example, you are an accountant. Ask yourself in the morning before you start your work day: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how interested am I in my job?” And then ask yourself: “What can raise my interest in work to 10? What can make my work more interesting for me? How can I have more fun while doing this work? Etc."
Interest is our driving motive and what creates drive and inspiration. That’s why it’s so important to be interested in what we do!

How do you create and arouse your interest in work? And what are your “recipes” for achievement?