Make Sure You're Not De-Motivating Your Team (Harvard Business School)

People have three main goals at work:
- to be treated with respect and equity
- to take pride in a job well done
- to have good relationships with fellow employees

If even one of these factors are missing, workers are three times as likely to be unhappy at work. Surprisingly, not even a better paycheck will make up for the loss of one of the three biggest motivators.

The most important thing is to provide employees with a sense of security, one in which they do not fear that their jobs will be in jeopardy if their performance is not perfect and one in which layoffs are considered an extreme last resort, not just another option for dealing with hard times.