“As a keynote speaker for motivation and employee retention, Gunther Wolf has given us all a lot of insights. The keynote was very entertaining and the contents were presented in a very humorous way.”

Keynote Leadership, Motivation Strategy, Employee Retention Strategy

Employee retention and loyalty: Motivation is included!

Motivation Keynote: Motivation through employee retention or employee retention through motivation?

The fact that employee retention and motivation are particularly closely related is undoubtedly part of the basic knowledge of every HR manager.

But how exactly do these two corporate success factors depend on each other? And what are the mechanisms with which company management, personnel managers and executives can control both employee retention and motivation?

In order to gain clarity, the entrepreneurs, who are organised as alumni of the Zürcher Kantonalbank, asked the expert Gunther Wolf for two things: On the one hand, he should be available as keynote speaker for motivation and staff retention at the next alumni event. On the other hand, the Motivation Keynote Speaker was to write a practice-oriented white paper for ZKB Alumni on this topic.

Motivation Keynote Speaker

Does motivation arise through employee retention? Or does a high level of employee loyalty result from a correspondingly high level of motivation? One could call this a crucial question for company management, personnel managers and executives. Because both are correct.

This was explained by motivation and employee retention expert Gunther Wolf as Motivation Keynote Speaker at the ZKB Alumni Event in October and in the parallel white paper.

Motivation comes from employee retention

It is evident and has also been proven in studies: Employees who feel particularly close to their employer, their work tasks, their colleagues and their supervisor are correspondingly highly motivated and enthusiastic. In practice, this means for companies: Those who take extensive measures to increase employee loyalty can look forward to an optimal ROI.

Because high motivation and performance of the workforce regularly leads to above-average corporate profits. This is also empirically proven: Those companies with high levels of staff retention show above-average corporate results (Wolf, Mitarbeiterbindung 2018, p. 204 ff.). This results in an extremely rapid amortisation of the time and financial investments associated with the implementation of employee retention measures.

Employee loyalty is the result of motivation

“But of course it also applies: In companies where employee loyalty is very weak, motivation and the company’s performance can drop sharply,” warns the Motivation Keynote Speaker. “If employees only show moderate commitment, all customers will gradually leave. On top of that, such companies have to reckon with higher rates of unwanted fluctuation as well as with resulting declines in profits due to the increase in fluctuation-related costs”.

However, if all employees are highly motivated to perform and the company achieves corresponding success, this in turn has a positive effect on employee loyalty. This is where the mechanism of social identity comes into play: In order to strengthen one’s own self-esteem, which to a certain extent is described by organizational affiliations, people identify with a company the more successful it is.

Motivating and retaining employees are management tasks

“And what is the best way for me as a personnel manager to improve employee loyalty or motivation?” is what one participant wants to know. The Motivation Keynote Speaker does not hesitate with his answer: “With your managers. Employees are not all the same: The situation and levers for retention and motivation vary greatly from one individual to another. You will achieve little with blanket measures. Only the direct superior is close enough to his employees to know and use the best possible individual lever!

In the ZKB white paper “Employee Retention: Retaining, retaining, motivating and winning the best employees”, Gunther Wolf describes in detail the connection between retention and motivation. In addition, as the title suggests, he also describes the effects of employee retention on achievable improvements in the area of fluctuation and staff recruitment.

Motivation Keynote and literature

At his keynote in October, Gunther Wolf also explained to the 150 entrepreneurs organised in ZKB Alumni how to optimally manage employee loyalty and motivation. To this end, he outlined the four relevant employee retention relationships. In his typical humorous and interactive presentation, he and the participants assessed the effects of corporate loyalty, task retention, team loyalty and supervisor loyalty on motivation.

Gunther Wolf also discussed the four types of employee retention and their motivational effect in the keynote speech Motivation. The audience recognized clear differences in the achievable motivation in rational employee retention compared to non-rational types of employee retention (emotional, behavioral, normative).

Motivation strategy: SELIMAB instead of watering can

In order to generate the best possible ROI of the measures for employee retention through motivation, the SELIMAB method should also be used. For this purpose, the Motivation Keynote Speaker compared the motivational effects of equally distributed employee retention measures with the effects on motivation of Selective Individualised Employee Retention (SELIMAB).

With the help of the selective-individualized approach, companies achieve a much higher effectiveness. In addition, they realise a drastic improvement in terms of the economic efficiency of the use of resources.

Motivate and bind with determination

However, it is not uncommon for company management, personnel managers and executives to fear that the peace of the company will be impaired if everyone is not treated equally. Gunther Wolf finds clear words for these fears: “If you make individual differences in hiring, promotion, remuneration and task allocation, you should consequently not let it go when it comes to commitment and motivation!”

We will be happy to send you further participant votes on request. If you would like to book Gunther Wolf for a keynote motivation and/or employee retention, please contact the motivation expert.

WOLF Management Consultancy | Summary

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Employee retention and loyalty: Motivation is included!