It’s early Monday morning, and your team gets into the office slowly. There are bags under their eyes, and one thing is obvious: no one is excited to work and there’s a clear sign of lack of employee motivation.
Every manager struggles to encourage staff occasionally, but excellent managers know that motivation for employees is essential to overall performance.
Although there is no way of making sure your staff stays committed and inspired, there are several particular and successful ways that can have significant and lasting benefits on employee motivation and productivity at work.
These six tactics are the most popular means of employee motivation:
1. Promoting Open Communication
Open communication with your workforce is essential for employee motivation to be maintained.
Nobody wants to work under a boss that feels uncomfortable. Applying strategies to communicate effectively with your team and it will work well for your staff.
An employee invested in work will naturally have questions, comments, or concerns.
With an open-door policy and constantly open communication channels, your employees feel that their input is crucial.
If an open-door policy is unrealistic to you, it can be effective to allow people to express or write down their issues for a group discussion during team meetings.
It is equally vital to follow your employees upon their input as it is to request it.
Follow-up at least shows employees that you have taken time to think about their remarks instead of dismissing them or passing them to another person.
Your team will know that you are listening and will not be frightened to come back to you in the future.
Read More: 6 Reasons Why We All Are Addicted To Employee Rewards
2. Establish an Agile Work Environment
The creation of an agile work environment is another simple step to promote employee enthusiasm and commitment.
An agile working environment refers to rapid project management practices that value constant change and adaptation to a fixed structure.
Although this technique is typically employed in the industries that develop software, its concepts are proved beneficial in other industries as well.
In psychology, there is a concept called ‘the Principle of Pleasure’, which is what makes us human beings inclined to pursue long-term gains while ignoring short-term advantages.
Managers can use this feature of human nature in agile working settings by employees working on projects to produce results as rapidly and efficiently as feasible.
A fast-paced environment is exciting and encouraging and employees will naturally be more involved in a project which will sooner rather than later meet this psychological demand for reward.
3. Be someone for whom people would like to work
Even if you love what you do, a miserable manager might wreck a record time for an ideal job. That’s why being someone you would like to work for is essential to keep your staff motivated.
It is claimed that smiles are contagious, and thus your team will follow your lead if you remain optimistic and enthusiastic about working each day.
People do not want to please someone who seems unpleasant; thus, it is significant to be passionate about the work done in your firm.
When you are thrilled to work, your colleagues will gladly work for you and will be driven to continue with the positive vibes.
Despite our best efforts, we are all sometimes short of expectations. As a manager, it’s vital to recognize that your staff is people — not programmable robots — to keep them engaged.
As a manager, understanding is essential for employee motivation.
4. Make the Workplace Rewarding
Providing incentives or awards to achieve particular objectives is an excellent method to get your workers to go further.
Making their employment both entertaining and fulfilling will certainly increase employee motivation.
A strategy termed ‘gamification’ entails adding game-like principles to routine chores to stimulate interest and friendly workplace competition.
Google used the so-called ‘Google Code Jam’ as a fine example of this method, which provides the corporation with a coding competition for the fishing of potential employers.
You’ll be amazed how competitive your employees are with a $10 gift card or an afternoon off (and, of course, bragging rights).
It is crucial to reward your staff for their hard work and how motivated they are.
It can also be cost-effective to recognize them for their successes – you don’t need to utilize monetary awards or even spend money on a present.
5. Foster workplace Community Culture
The average full-time adult worker stays in the same office with the same people for 40 hours a week.
As a manager, it is crucial that your staff are happy with the individuals they work with, to keep them inspired and motivated.
You may promote strong employee interactions with team bonding exercises, whether you start with a staff meeting every day or plan a bowling night once a month.
Focusing on ensuring that your staff is mutually amicable improves communication and consequently the resolution of problems without your help.
Workplace conflicts are not always preventable. If there is a problem between your employees, you want to be available to your personnel to bring it to your attention immediately.
Being unbiased and fair with employees can help you handle the problem quickly and assist your employees to move their focus away from the drama and back to what is critical.
6. Invest in the happiness of your employees
According to the Social Market Foundation and the World Economy Competitive Advantage Center of the University of Warwick, happier individuals are more productive.
When staff feels good about coming to work, work barely seems like work; rather it feels like a fun activity.
Overworked staff are not motivated to generate quality results.
Therefore, it is essential to acknowledge that your employees have a life without work to enhance their motivation.
Your team will be a lot happier if they have the convenience to ask for a self-care day, or if they know you will understand whether they have a family emergency.
Bottom-Line
Employee motivation is an essential part of success and productivity – something no coffee can round off. Following the simple steps mentioned in this article, will foster drive and passion at your workplace.
