Employee motivation plays a pivotal role in making an organization successful. This is because human capital is the most valuable asset for any organization. Human capital is primarily responsible for success or failure of any organization. Thus, it is very important to constantly motivate the employees.

Now, the question here is –What is ‘Motivation’ and how can we motivate the employees to get the best out of them?

‘Motivation’ closes the gap between what needs to be done and what is not being done.

Now, how do we motivate the employees?

Employee motivation can be achieved through-appreciation, recognition, compensation, job satisfaction in order words an organization may use cash or non-cash incentives to motivate its employees.

In the traditional incentive system there was no place for non-cash incentives. Employers merely wanted to get their work done and pay the employees for that. That’s it!

Today’s generation wants different things than prior generation and therefore, the need for non-cash incentives has aroused. Employers today understand that only cash incentives are not sufficient to keep the employees motivated. This is because cash has little emotional value. Once it’s spent it’s almost forgotten. On the other hand, the non-cash incentives are memorable and they ‘stick’ in the recipients mind and strengthen the relationship between employer and employee.

Leading multinationals believe in motivating their employees through cash as well as non-cash incentives. Cash incentives include in addition to compensation- bonus payments, location allowances, deferred income payments, retention bonus etc. The last two namely deferred income payments and retention bonus motivate the employees to stick to the company.

These organizations also motivate their employees by rewarding them with non-cash incentives such as flexible working hours, paid time offs, organizing team outings, gifting rewards points. These organizations also come out with schemes such as ‘Employee of the month’, ‘rising star of the month’ which motivate even the new joiners to give their best shot.

They also have regular town halls, coffee with leadership team through which employee not only comes to know about the organization’s future plans and how he can contribute to overall organization’s success but he also feels that he is being involved in the decision making process by the organization.

The key here is to keep the employees motivated as they are an integral part of an organization’s success. A combination of cash as well as non-cash incentives will work well for both the organization as well as the employees.