In all businesses, no matter the type of industry, you need to have a well-motivated and focused workforce. Without this, you’ll only be achieving a small percent of what you really could do. Keeping your staff motivated can be quite tough but your business might depend on it. There are tonnes of different ways to do this. The key is, everyone is different. People all respond to different aspects of motivation so don’t think you’ll find a one answer fits all solution.
Instead, approach the task with a wide net approach so you can motivate as many as possible. If you increase productivity you might see your profits go up at the same time. These tips can help you get started. They might not all apply to you, or you might have already started to implement them but see if they help and get you thinking about other things you can do to motivate your team.
Invest In Your Team For Success
If you don’t invest in your employees how can you expect them to feel motivated and able to grow? There are a lot of different ways to invest in your team. It could simply mean you sitting down with them and investing your time to upskill them in a certain area. You could even look for an Apprenticeship training provider to help upskill. Or you could look at online training packages for your workforce. The salient point is that you can’t expect more productively, or for your team to suddenly improve performance when you aren’t doing anything to help them increase their performance.
Allow Them Downtime
You can’t work them to the bone and expect them to get even better. You’ll be surprised what some downtime during the day does for productivity. Being able to take a step back from work can revitalise the mind. To that end, you need to make sure they’re getting long enough breaks. Not only that, but to make sure they’re getting these breaks somewhere away from their usual workplace.
Make sure your break room is up to scratch with enough tables and chairs for everyone. You also want to allow a certain degree of in work downtime. Meaning, even when they aren’t on break you should allow them to get up and make a drink or grab a snack. Downtime can make a huge difference.
Allow flexibility
Much like downtime, allowing flexibility is a great way to give people some ownership over their working day. Doing so can have a huge psychological effect on the individual as they’re able to plan their own workday. This could be as simple as allowing employees to choose when they start work within a two-hour window at the beginning and end of the day.
So long as their targets are still being hit and they do the same hours then nothing can go wrong. Flexible working is being more widely adopted by many places including household names. This also includes working from home for one or two days a week. Doing this allows the individual to save money on the commute and adds a level of comfort to the working day. Don’t fall behind. Again, this is dependent on the industry you operate in, but if home working is possible to implement you should go ahead and do it.
Reward Success
If you’re going to reward success you need to do it consistently. One of the main ways to do this is by picking clear targets to hit for your employees. Rewarding them comes in a lot of different ways and doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. You could start by calling out the successful person in a weekly meeting and commending them. Or, it could be paying them a bonus. You need to make sure it’s consistent so that everyone is on a level playing field.
You also need to ensure that you don’t set the bar too low or you’ll be rewarding people all of the time. You only need to commend people when you think it’s genuine. If you reward people, they’ll have something tangible to work towards outside the remit of what they usually do at work.
If you don’t have any kind of reward system in place then what’s motivating them to work at a consistent pace? If you aren’t going to recognise good work why are they going to stretch themselves? Make sure your reward plan is scalable and also sustainable before implementation and you’ll be onto a winner.