Why is Money not the right way to motivate your employees?

In the past years, I visited around 100 companies and we had talks about life-balance for their employees. I have to admit that companies have different priorities. There are companies that truly care about their employees. There are also some that would rather focus on other things than the workforce.should be focusing on.

As a life-balance expert, I am posing this very important question to reflect on.

Why should a company motivate the employees to have a good life balance rather than money?

For one, a big paycheck is not enough compensation. Why?

Money is like drugs. When you get some, you want more. When you have more, you want a lot more. It is not enough to satisfy one’s needs. If money becomes the motivation in the team, you will run out of it quicker than you acquire them.

I know a consulting company in Vienna that gives fresh graduates 140 thousand euros, annually. It is great money, however, it is evident how they’re unhappy and burned out. They are only working to save money and leave their jobs. They hate working there!

Money can be a great motivation and the job should be well paid, but there are other points which are important. According to the latest research at Gallup, employees appreciate it when their employers take care of their psychological health.

What do employees need?
  1. The employees need someone to understand them. Bottom line: they need a leader to lead them.
  2. They need to develop as individuals, hence, they need to feel safe and integrated.

A company can only give this, if they know the value of humanity, and the value of the Human Resources department.

What should companies do?

TRAINING
  1. Training for leaders. There should be a learning and development plan for the leadership, and from here the talents should be defined. And they should also have a special learning and development plan.

  2. Training for the workforce. All other employees should also have a plan to continue their development. Without making the employees learn and develop the gaps between the leadership, talents and employees will result in psychological problems, like communication problems, conflicts, presenteeism, and team negativity.
HEALTH & WELLNESS

Other than learning and development, the wellness and the health of the employees should also be considered.

Companies should be mindful of their employees’ health, especially on the quality of the food they eat and their day-to-day movement while in the office.

  1. What do they eat when they are stressed? for snacks? What food is available in the company’s pantry?
  2. What sports and recreational programs does the company offer?
  3. Are they mentally ready for future challenges?

Every part of a person’s wellbeing is essential to his productivity and success. If a company takes priority in that, they will surely become a magnet for high-class talents. They will also retain loyal workers that will help to leverage their businesses.

So the equation is:

Happy Employee = (Learning and development plans for leaders, talents and the workforce + a good life balance program for the employees + good payment)

Pretty basic. Let’s talk!

6 stress management techniques Relaxing techniques

There are so many people who are thinking too much, they are all the time thinking about past experiences which they didn’t take a lesson learned out of it, and looking about how this could effect their future, and thinking about all the things which could happen.

Stress comes when we think that we are losing control and we let the external world effect our internal world.

Stress is the 1st step to alot of serious diseases like heart problems, and clots but also psychological diseases like burn-out or depression.

Everyday life is often too stressful.

We often don’t even realize how stressed we are.

Office, children, household, leisure activities: What sounds like normal everyday life is for most primarily one thing – pure stress. But it’s not just packed days, but also the fast pace of our times with the expectation of constant accessibility that are partly responsible for the fact that many people are under a great deal of stress every day. Time and again, studies
show that stress-related illnesses have been on the rise in recent years.

We often don’t even realize how stressed we are. The more we accumulate in our daily to-dos, the more our internal pressure increases. But often we only notice how stressed we really are in the quiet moments. Instead of relaxing, we continue to work and postpone
the break. But it is precisely short breaks that are so important and help to reduce stress, with some immediately applicable, psychological methods it goes even faster.

So what to do when everything is just too much? 

These 3 psychological methods help to cope with stress. Whether in the office or everyday life.
Method 1: First take a deep breath with the 4-7-11 method.

Leave everything behind.

  1. Put down the pen and pause for a moment. With the 4-7-11 method, we get ourselves out of the circles of thoughts.
  2. Breathe deeply into the belly while counting to four. Then exhale for seven seconds. Repeat the whole thing eleven times. Numerous studies prove the effect of conscious breathing as a relaxation technique. Under stress, we breathe far too shallowly.
  3. Deep breathing, on the other hand, resupplies the body with sufficient oxygen and lowers blood pressure. Counting at the same time creates new focus and interrupts stressful thoughts.
Method 2: Set priorities with the 80/20 rule.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) said that you can achieve the greatest effect with just a small amount of effort. That 80% of the result is already achieved with 20% effort. For the remaining 20% success one wastes mostly unnecessary energy. If we lower our own expectations, put aside the excessive perfectionism and give our best – as good as it is possible – there is also energy left for ourselves. No one expects us to do everything perfectly.

Method 3: Feel your body and breath

Usually we breathe completely unconsciously. Relaxation techniques direct our attention to breathing to ease the way out of stress and tension. Breathing is one of our basic rhythms, a rhythm that we can consciously influence.

Exercise:

  • Sit or stand upright and place both hands on the tips of your lungs. Consciously breathe in and out into this area. Feel how the chest rises and
    falls.
  • Place your hands on the lower ribs and feel how the ribs expand and close again in your breathing rhythm.
  • Place your hands on the lower abdomen, the fingers below the navel, the thumbs above and feel the breathing movement here.
  • Put the backs of your hands on your back as high as possible and feel the expansion of the breathing space in this area.
  • Put your hands on the kidney area, feel the breathing space here.
  • Put your hands on your sacrum, feeling the small movements that your breath is in this area triggers.
  • Put your hands on the lower costal arch again and feel from here all of your breathing.