How to Motivate Employees: 

Have you noticed a vibe shift at work?

I’m always yapping with my HR friends and recently a lot have all shared employees who seem tired, uninspired and struggling to keep up with all that’s happening in the world.

Layoffs. Tariffs. Wars.

It’s a lot.

Gallup just released their State of Global Workforce Report and for the second time in 12 years engagement has gone down.

And from everything I’ve observed and heard, I’m not surprised.

So, what’s going on??? Too much for one newsletter, trust me. 

But this whole quarter I’m digging into what employees want… and maybe what employees want is to be motivated. 

And maybe that disengagement is caused by lack of motivation? 

Motivation is the desire to act on something and achieve something – usually a goal.  

Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic.

❤️Intrinsic motivation is driven by internal satisfaction, enjoyment or personal growth.

💚Extrinsic motivation is driven by external factors like rewards, praise or recognition. 

Motivation is important for a few reasons like:

• Goal achievement: motivation is key to setting and actually accomplishing goals 
• Wellbeing: lack of motivation can contribute to things like lower satisfaction
• Learning and growth: motivation fuels things like creativity, personal development and growth 

Not only do employees want to be motivated, we also gain a bunch of benefits from them being motivated.

So how do we do it??

I wish we could wave a magic wand and boom everyone’s motivated but it’s actually a combo of a few groups at work that are responsible for employee motivation. 

3 groups that directly impact motivation at work:

1. Managers 
2. Leaders
3. HR (yes, us!!)

Let’s look at each one!

Managers: 

The Gallup report pointed to a group that had the sharpest decline in engagement…

It was managers.

Woof. 

And managers have the biggest impact on an employee’s day to day and motivation.

Double woof.

They do things like:

• Set expectations
• Determine goals 
• Share feedback
• Give context 

But the most important thing managers do?

✨They can make employees feel like their work matters TODAY. ✨

Connecting day to day work ➡️ the bigger picture is a must when it comes to motivation.

Here’s how to do it: 

• Connect goals to company wide priorities. How is this work being done tied to the broader team, department and company goals? 
• Celebrate small wins. Celebrating progress, not just success actually brings the employee on the journey with you. This can happen in 1:1 settings, team meetings or even company wide. 
• Connecting the dots, constantly. Connecting today’s work to tomorrow’s goals should be repeated often. By reinforcing the overall mission employees can begin to better understand and connect their work. 

In practice – You know I love a REAL example. 

Goal: Hire XX# new employees by Q4 to support company growth, launch new products, and expand into new markets.

Team: Recruiting 

Connecting goals to company wide priorities:
“Every role you fill directly helps us hit our growth targets. Without these hires, we can’t launch new products or expand into new markets. It’s critical we hire talent to help the rest of the company achieve their goals and grow revenue.”

Celebrate small wins:
“I know you scheduled 15 phone screens this week for the Engineering leader role, by filling that role we get one step closer to rounding out the team and being able to hire those additional junior engineers. I appreciate all the hard work you’re doing and I know this role is more complicated because we are looking for a leader. Thank you.”

Reinforcing the mission:
“Every interview we schedule and every offer we make gets us one step closer to our big goal of growing the company by 20% this year. If there is anything I can do to help make the process easier, I’m here to support you and remove any roadblocks.” 

🚨Boom, bop, bam! Motivation activated. 

But there’s this other tricky thing about motivation… Everyone is somewhat motivated by different things. 

Leaders:   

Have you ever worked with an utterly unmotivating leader?

Like maybe they didn’t seem to care, put thought into anything or take accountability. They just seemed meh.

How did that make you feel about your organization? Maybe not great…

🗺️Leaders play a huge role in connecting employees to the future. They are critical to making sure you believe in where the company is going and why it’s worth your energy.

And energy isn’t limitless… it’s a precious commodity. 

🌎When leaders are clear, consistent, and connected to the mission, employees can actually see themselves as part of something bigger. Employees will feel like their work matters to the broader goal. 

But when leaders are checked out, vague, or disconnected, it’s easy for employees to feel like… why bother?

Good leadership doesn’t just inspire and motivate, it also stabilizes employees during the ups and downs. 

A tall order I know!

💥A critical part for leaders looking to motivate employees is how they tell the story.

A vision without a story is easy to forget and even easier to ignore.

Employees don’t just want to hear what we’re doing — they want to know and feel why it matters. 

A good story connects today’s hard work to tomorrow’s bigger success. It turns company goals into something personal, relatable, and real. 

Storytelling for leadership can be hard to nail, so I’ve dedicated an upcoming newsletter to this topic!

HR:

If managers are the day-to-day pulse point and leaders shape the bigger picture, where does that put HR when it comes to motivation?

Well, we’re the systems builders.

We build the structures that should allow motivation to thrive,  not smother it.

That means creating processes and policies that drive fairness, equity, recognition, and belonging at scale.

📣Here’s the thing: nothing kills motivation faster than feeling like others are getting opportunities you aren’t, or watching louder voices get all the recognition while your hard work gets overlooked.

I have personally been there too many times! I intimately know the feeling of your motivation deflating and thinking, this doesn’t even matter. 

Our job is to make sure the environment matches the promises, that the systems actually fuel employee motivation, not quietly drain it away.

I know… that sounds somewhat overwhelming. Especially considering there are so many variables that can impact the environment from toxic employees, overwhelmed managers to checked out leaders. 

But it’s not IMPOSSIBLE. 

Start with an audit. 

How often do you take time to review your process and policies? I usually do a retro after every process I run but at scale… that’s rough. You’d be in meetings all day! So ideally once a quarter or at least twice a year run through all your processes and audit them. ✍🏽Here’s a checklist you can use! If you love this or hate this plz let me know.  

What’s Next:

^^ This might be one of my most said quotes. 

Next week is a doozy – I’m digging into HOW to figure out how someone is motivated and what managers can do to understand their team better. 

I might be asking you to look internally and also understand your key motivators. And maybe I’ll be super honest and tell you mine. 

HOW FUN!