It doesn’t matter if you own a business or manage one; there’s a good chance you care about its success. You are motivated to work harder and be more productive day after day.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case for your team. In fact, according to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management, just 69% of employees surveyed felt they consistently put their all into their work.
Are you ready to implement effective strategies to help improve worker motivation
? Below you can find effective and proven strategies to try.
If you have tried incentives, such as looking into cruise deals and vacation options for top performers, but are still having subpar results, it may be time to change tactics. Even the best business owners and managers must think outside the box to find effective ways to motivate their workers.
1. Use Incentives and Gamification
Incentivizing productivity can be effective. However, you may have to approach the incentives from a different direction. For example, rather than providing rewards for certain productivity levels, consider providing incentives for completing new training. If you make incentives for other things besides the obvious, it can encourage your team to work harder and achieve better results beyond productivity.
2. Show Your Team Trust
If you let your team know that you trust and depend on them, then they can fill these shoes sooner than you may think. You may be surprised at how far a vote of confidence can go. Let your team know that you trust them to handle the work and do the best job possible. When you do this, there’s a good chance you won’t face many disappointments when it comes to their work ethic and productivity.
3. Set Small Weekly Goals
While you may have lofty ambitions, when it comes to goals, make them small and achievable. This helps keep people focused on what needs to be done to reach the next milestone.
Instead of setting a goal of 25,000 new customers by the end of the year, focus on getting 10 new customers a day, or 100 per week. With small goals, they don’t seem so impossible. If and when you achieve a smaller goal, you should thank your team with a party, time off, money, or something else. If your employees see that you set realistic goals they can achieve, they are more likely to focus on doing so because the prize or benefit is within reach.
4. Give Your Team a Purpose
You may find it is possible to motivate your employees if you give them a purpose. When you do this, they can understand the bigger vision you have and be able to execute it much more effectively. Understanding their purpose and the business’s purpose helps employees see how they fit into the company’s bigger picture.
5. Stay Positive
Try to be the positive voice in the office and pump that positivity and energy throughout your entire office. If you want to ensure your team catches on to this positivity, you have to lead by example. Business culture is a crucial part of productivity and surpassing goals. While it is important to focus and meet goals, you should also prioritize playing games, team building, and having fun together. Working and playing hard go hand in hand. It would help if you always tried to stay high-energy and in the moment. This is a great way to encourage your team to work harder while ensuring they don’t hate what they are doing.
6. Practice Transparency
Be open with your employees about everything that is going on with and in your business, at the highest to the lowest levels. This ensures there are no surprises. It also gives everyone on your team the opportunity to ask questions or to provide their feedback. You should make sure your team feels included when it comes to bigger decisions — and small ones too. Also, this can help ensure they remain committed to the direction your business takes. Believe it or not, by doing this, you can increase pride and loyalty in your business.
7. Focus on Motivating Individuals Rather Than the Entire Team
Focusing on aligned incentives is the best way to ensure that everyone on the team works toward the same common goal. When you frame the strategy in several ways, it helps to ensure that every stakeholder has a full, clear, and personal understanding of why working together is so important. This technique helps you motivate your team to ensure they can accomplish amazing things together.
8. Learn What Makes Your Employees Tick
Ask why your workers like and don’t like working with you. Share the bigger picture of your company goals and respond to the questions they have. Take time to discern the goals and then invest in their ongoing professional growth. Schedule one-on-one check-ins and listen to the ideas they have. Your employees are good at their roles in the company and likely have insight that can help things move more smoothly.
Make sure you respect each person’s personal schedules and the time they are away from work. Never set their timelines and goals against each other; this is one of the fastest ways to lose a great employee.
9. Use Feedback to Give Rewards
You can create methods of finding out how often your team members are praised and then send out monthly or daily summaries. You can also create a competition. The employee who can collect the most compliments during a set time period receives recognition and awards. Not only does this encourage your team to work harder, but it also encourages them to support one another. Positive energy is something that can be invaluable as you look for new people to join your team.
10. Put a Priority on Achieving a Work-Life Balance
You can create incentives in your office, such as “phone booth” machines that let workers grab dollar bills. This is a fun tool that can motivate a sales team, but on a much smaller scale. Besides having incentives like this to reward meeting goals, you can encourage your workers to take time for themselves, go on vacation, or just enjoy a day at home doing nothing. When you create a culture that prioritizes achieving a healthy work-life balance, you will see increased happiness and productivity in the workplace.
11. Implement an Open-Door Policy
You may be surprised at how far words like “please” and “thank you” can really go. It would help if you always spoke to your team about how you want to be spoken to. You can also consider creating an open-door policy for ideas, suggestions, complaints, and questions. If your team feels like what they have to say matters, they may also become more confident in their position with your company and can feel like they have much more stake in their job than just a paycheck.
12. Building a Motivated Workplace
As you can see from the information here, more than a few factors need to be considered when it comes to making a motivating work environment. With the tips here, you can create a workplace that motivates your employees and helps them achieve superior productivity levels. Keep in mind that using a process of trial and error can help you find what works best for your business and your team.
