171. Truly Drive Team Motivation | Corporate Wellness

Unlocking the Secrets of Intrinsic Motivation for Effective Corporate Wellness

Links mentioned in today's episode:

Kathie Owen Links: https://www.kathieowen.com/links
Blog post with bonus resources for today's video: https://www.kathieowen.com/blog/motivation-corporate-wellness
The book Psychocybernetics: https://amzn.to/3WoONMR
Kathie Owen Corporate Wellness: https://www.kathieowen.com/corporate-wellness
Kathie Owen Reality Transurfing: https://www.kathieowen.com/reality-transurfing
Kathie Owen Fitness: https://www.kathieowen.com/fitness
Excellent app for rewards program for your team: https://bonusly.com/

In this episode, Kathie Owen delves into the nuanced realm of motivation, especially intrinsic motivation, and its critical role in corporate wellness.

She emphasizes understanding intrinsic motivators tailored to different generations in the workforce and provides strategies to boost motivation, including personalized development programs, recognition, and creating a positive work environment.

Owen also highlights the penalties of neglecting motivation, such as decreased productivity and increased employee turnover.

She introduces tools like assessments and corporate wellness programs, including fitness and nutrition initiatives, that can enhance team engagement and foster a productive, motivated workplace.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Motivation
00:52 Understanding Intrinsic Motivation
04:47 Generational Motivators
10:29 Consequences of Unmotivated Employees
13:13 Strategies to Boost Team Motivation
17:15 Role of Corporate Wellness Programs
22:45 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:00

Today. Let's talk about motivation. But not motivation. Like you think, because motivation to me is a buzzword. But it is something that I geek out about and we want to know how to motivate our teams as corporate wellness professionals. And it's, it's kind of an important thing, but it's tricky. They heard me say that before motivation is tricky. And today I'm going to give you ways to motivate your team. Especially in different stages of their life. As well as what. Is the best motivation for anybody that will last consistently. Yeah, that's what we're talking about today. You know, motivation is not just a buzzword. It is the key to unlocking the gold inside your team. But the thing is, is motivation is a word that's thrown around like confetti. Oh, let's motivate the team. Let's motivate this. Let's get more productive. Let's motivate productivity. What that's too abstract. It's too. Difficult to figure out. But the thing is, is I have been a geek about motivation since college. And when I first was in college, I wrote a paper on the book. Psycho-Cybernetics I've done a video on the book as well, but Psycho-Cybernetics is all about building self-esteem and working on building motivation within you. And when I first read that book, which was a long time ago. I got insight into motivation. And then I became a personal trainer. I became a fitness instructor and. A good fitness instructor, a good personal trainer knows how to motivate their clients, knows how to motivate their team. But what kind of motivation, Kathie? Because that is the key. We want to know their intrinsic motivators. Intrinsic motivation comes from the inside. It's going to assure me that my client is going to do what I asked them when. I'm trying to fill, fill their plan in their fitness routine or fill their workouts. The way they want to. But if you don't know what intrinsically motivates somebody, you're not going to get the results as a personal trainer, as a coach, as a corporate wellness professional. And when you are working with a team, there's a lot of intricacies that go inside there. Let's discuss. You're listening to Kathie's coaching podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen. On this channel. We talk about Reality Transurfing, corporate wellness, fitness, and more. And today we're talking about motivation and why it is gold for you to understand what motivates your team and your corporate wellness programs. Research from the Harvard business review. Shows that employees who are intrinsically motivated are three times more engaged and perform better than those driven by external rewards. So I think it would be a good idea to understand what intrinsically motivates my team, but that's where the work comes in. And. Aye. Like I said, I've always geeked out about motivation because I found that was the key that unlocked the success. Seriously across the board. That's not chat GPT going, oh, unlock the key to success. That is Kathie Owen going, Hey, this is how we find success in our clients as a personal trainer and ourselves as a person who wants to be motivated to do something. In our teams to find what intrinsically motivates them. But when we're working with a team, we've got to consider several factors. Number one is generations. Each generation has different motivators. So we want to compile the different motivators that go with each generation. We interrupt this episode, because if you are looking for ways to motivate your team, sign up for our newsletter because every week I provide information on. Sending an email to your team on providing motivation. Why I say what I say and what it goes into this. Now my email newsletter, it consists of my clients that are personal training clients, as well as my corporate wellness professionals. They coincide. This is how they coincide because they both go together in a fun way. I show I share a wellness. Wednesday type tip. Share, maybe a recipe. I share maybe a food label thing. The ideas are endless. Anyways, be sure to go to Kathie owen.com and sign up for our newsletter today. Let's get back to the episode. We have the baby boomers. They were born in between 1946 and 1964. The baby boomers are mostly considering retirement. But they're still in the workforce. There's still plenty of them and companies that I work with. So, how do we motivate the baby boomers? This is a small population, but we still want to consider what motivates them. Recognition and respect is number one. And baby boomers actually value acknowledgement of their experience and contributions. They appreciate traditional rewards like promotions and titles. They're also motivated by job security. Many are nearing retirement and value stability. And work ethic. They take pride in their work and appreciate when it is recognized. So we'll go to gen X. They were born in between the years of 1964 and about 1980. They value work-life balance. They value, flexibility and the ability to balance their professional and their personal lives. Autonomy. They prefer to work independently and appreciate having control over their tasks. And skill development. Opportunities for personal growth and learning new skills. Are highly motivating for them. Highly motivating. Let's talk about millennials. They also take up a big part of the workplace population. Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996. They value purpose and meaning millennials want to feel that their work has a meaningful impact. They value collaboration. They thrive in a team environments and value, open communication. And continuous feedback, send regular feedback and opportunities for improvement because that is important to them. And then we have gen Z gen Z was born in between 1997 and 2012. They are the smaller population in the workplace. They value innovation and technology. This generation is motivated by cutting edge technology and innovative projects. They value career advancement. They are ambitious and seek rapid career progression and workplace culture. A positive, inclusive and socially responsible workplace is crucial. Why did I discuss the different populations as you can see, there's a wide variety of motivators and we want to include everyone. We want to have a diversity of things in our culture that aspires to each generations motivators. One of the ways that I work with companies is I will do assessments and I will see what motivates the team. What's the biggest motivator, but I include each of these values. And each of these generations. What motivates them, because we want to know what the biggest motivator is. There are commonalities and there's also things that are not common. And we want to find what's the biggest motivator. Because if we provide that for them, they're going to be more productive and there are consequences for not motivating your team. And you want to know that that's why these assessments are so important. These assessments provide you with valuable ideas and tools and you have to be consistent. You'll hear me say that word all the time. Be consistent. Because consistent behaviors is what's going to send you to the next. Level and be able to motivate your team in a way that actually motivates them, not what you think motivates them, because your program is not going to work unless you realize what motivates them. So there are some consequences. For motivating your team. Let's talk about those. Unmotivated employees can significantly harm a business. I've seen this happen so many times and it has to do with change management a lot. But if you do not motivate your employees properly. What's going to happen is your employees are going to tell you how to run your business, as opposed to you telling them how they're going to run your business. And it's a tricky thing just like motivation. It's a very tricky thing. But let's discuss some of the consequences that happen when you don't motivate your team properly. You have decreased productivity. Lack of motivation leads to lower efficiency and output. Just like I just said it, they go into places where they just don't. Care. They're not going to try to help you run your business the way it needs to be run. As opposed to. You running your business. The way it needs to be run. You'll have an increased turnover. You're going to lose those prized employees. Unmotivated Employees are more likely to leave increasing recruitment and training costs. And even more, it's been proven that a loss of an employee, even at a low level in your company could cost you double their salary. Why... That's your employees telling you how to run business as opposed to the other way around. And then another consequence of unmotivated employees is you have damage to your morale. We've all felt that before everybody gets bummed out. Just depressed and you know what, because of the negativity bias. That negative in your morale is bigger than. The positive. Did you think about that? I know, right. It's weird. Like I said that negativity bias. It's always bigger than the positivity bias. And this disengagement can spread to other team members and create a toxic work environment. Seen it happen so many times. And it's crucial to identify you're unmotivated members and then find what motivates them. That's where that assessment comes into play, because you can find what exactly motivates your team. And then inspire them that way. Here's some strategies to boost motivation with your team. Number one personalized development programs. Understand what drives each team member. And align their roles with their personal goals. Offer opportunities for skill development and career advancement. This is where that assessment comes into play because you want to identify. Individual goals. What are their goals? Why are they working there? That's kind of important to know. Why do you work here? What do you value? Identifying if their values align with your values is important and that can happen in the interview process as well. And provide professional growth, provide ways for the team to learn their, their personal skills that they want to develop. And what I like about pay comm, which is what one of the companies I use uses is it has an area where you could take personal development. You could even take how to deal with. A disgruntled employee. Oh so much. And recognition and rewards. I just talked about this in one of my previous. videos and rewarding your team for things done. Right. And recognizing them is crucial. It's crucial for motivation because people like to be recognized and appreciated. You want to recognize individual and team accomplishments? And then customize the rewards to match the preferences of the different generations. As we talked about earlier. Number three, create a positive work environment. Promote work-life balance and implement. Flexible work arrangements. And foster inclusive inclusivity. Include everyone. That's what I mean. Create a culture where everyone feels valued and included. That is important. And, you know, I love a health fair for this reason because it gives, it gives us the opportunity to go, okay. We're including everybody. At in there, different things, you have different booths set up. In different areas. And everybody visits the one that they feel inclined to, not who you say they need to visit. And encourage open communication, establish regular feedback sessions, to understand employee concerns and suggestions. Be open to that. That's why I say consistent assessments. Is crucial. It's crucial just to have an understanding of what's motivating your team at the time and have an open communication be ready to take the feedback that's going to come in and make the changes necessary. That's where a corporate wellness professional can slide right in. And be your undercover boss, take care of things. Tell you, give you your feedback of how your team is performing, and then also give your team feedback of what your managers want, and we want to know that by having these assessments or having a rewards program that. Identifies this. And have transparent leadership. Leaders should be approachable and transparent about company goals and changes. This. Is one of the ones that I just really love because it, it helps us to understand. Where there are pitfalls. You're wasting money on team members that are not led effectively. I'm just gonna leave that there. On the table. The role of corporate wellness programs. Let's talk about that. We have several different types of wellness initiatives. We can have a fitness program. You could have a gym for your employees that can be really inspirational and motivational. And I'll put pictures of our gym on these slides. So you can see what I'm talking about because I just revamped the gym at one of the companies I worked for. And it's. My ideal was to have it be motivational and inspirational for years to come. Even after I'm gone. I want it to be a place where you walk in and you feel like you want to work out. That's what I wanted. And that's what it became. You want to provide mental health support. There is so many different things and, and actually I do my health fair in April and it's mental health awareness month. So. Make that my theme and I provide mental health. Support and resources all throughout the year. Even on my wellness days, I provide mental health support. We also have the calm app available to our team that I work with. And that calm app is very beneficial for the team if they need some mental health support, because that's one of the things that calm prides itself on is mental health. And then you also want to provide nutritional guidance. You'd be surprised how many people don't know. That things about reading a food label or what is the nutritional value in this drink, as opposed to this drink? Why do we need this vitamin, as opposed to this vitamin, for example, we just had a wellness date with one of the companies that I worked for and our theme was. Immunity support. And I brought in a supplement person who brought in all these different supplements and explained to them. Why they needed this, why they needed that. And it's beneficial for people to understand, Hey, we're not getting all the nutrients we need from our food. So let's add them with a supplement. And. Let's see how that works and see how that helps your body. I'm also big on biohacking, which is a new wave of healthcare. It's a trillion dollar business. And what biohacking is, is being proactive in your health as opposed to reactive, which means we're going to take care of certain things like maybe taking supplements. Maybe doing red light therapy, maybe doing recovery. Ice baths all these types of things are biohacking our system. So we live longer. We feel better. We look better and. It's natural. That's what I like about it. Another thing that corporate wellness professionals can do is provide engagement activities. One of the things that I'm in charge of is the lunch and learns, which means they meet with an executive team member. And then 10. Team members meet with this person for during lunchtime. And it builds comradery. It builds mentorship. It helps with change management as well, because what happens is the team members get to see the executive in a regular position and talk to them and understand, oh, now I see why we changed this method as opposed to that method, or we're doing this now, instead of that. And the lunch and learns are very beneficial for this because it helps others to see what's going on inside the company all across. The whole company and it builds comradery. Engagement. That's what we're talking about. Another way you could build engagement is create a rewards program. And I just talked about this not too long ago, but I actually had a meeting with a company called Bonusly. And what they do is they provide like a social media platform where it. Rewards employees and they can go buy things with their rewards points. For example, let's say you're a team leader and somebody sends you some points for doing a great job as your team lead, or they help you help somebody. With a problem. And you got those points. Everybody in the team sees that. As well as it's like a social media feed. So it's like, okay. So-and-so got these rewards for being a good team leader and helping so-and-so with this problem. And. This helps build comradery. It also helps to build. Faith in the team and, and have a transparent leader. I love that platform. Um, I will have a link to that in the show notes and description below because it's very valuable resource for a corporate wellness professional to see how the team is doing. And who's winning more points as a leader, or who's winning more points for their performance in their job. And they want to do this because it intrinsically motivates. Them maybe, perhaps they want to buy an Amazon card with that, or they want to donate to their favorite charity with those points. This program is phenomenal. So, as you can tell, I'm kind of passionate about motivation. I think it helps so much in a team environment and understanding what motivates the team helps as well. And it is the cornerstone in your team. And if you lose that cornerstone. You know, what's going to happen. Your team is going to be lopsided. So we want to have that stone set in there and ready to go. All right. That's my episode for today. I trust that you found it helpful. If you know someone who could benefit from this, please share it with them. And until next time I will see you next time, peace out and Namaste.