One of the most frustrating challenges a manager can face is turning
around an unmotivated employee. Often these employees have the
skills and intelligence to excel, but they sleepwalk through their days,
investing little thought or energy in what they are doing. Lack of motivation may be exhibited as a lack of activity in any of the following areas:

• Volunteering
• Bringing new ideas to a job
• Seeking promotion or greater responsibility
• Taking the initiative to solve problems or add value
• Participating in team or other work activities
• Discovering problems or exploring new opportunities
• Bringing energy and ideas to the workplace each day
• Investing thought, time, and self into the work at hand

These behaviors are a manager’s first clues that she or he is dealing
with an unmotivated employee. Naturally, the manager must determine
that the employee is not impaired or unqualified for the job as covered in
Chapters 4 and 19.

The next step is to have a joint goal-setting session with the employee. Once goals are set with the employee’s input, as described in Chapter 2, the most critical step follows: monitoring the employee’s performance and achievement of these goals. If the employee is not achieving these goals with the quality and timeliness that has been clearly agreed upon, then an intervention should be employed. People are motivated by two things: fear of punishment and hope of reward. Punishment is inherent
in poor performance, since the person could lose his or her job, status,
or income. It takes greater creativity to create rewards. The interventions in this chapter capitalize on the reward and punishment motivational forces. The reward interventions outnumber the punishment interventions, since a nonperforming employee has already shown a lack of responsiveness to potential punishment.

Taken From: 201 Ways to Turn Any Employee Into a STAR Performer