How to Motivate Your Staff

recruitmint • February 28, 2019

In any business, there will be days where employees and even managers can feel unmotivated. This could be due to a number of reasons, with most being external issues outside of your control. Understanding how to motivate your staff is key to retaining the top talent you have hired and moving the business forward as a whole.

If you want to motivate your staff and produce positive employee engagement, then you need to understand your employees individually and use that to make them feel passionate about their role in the business, working for the business and helping both themselves and the business grow.

We understand the repercussions of losing good members of staff and we don’t want you to lose them because they’re unmotivated. Follow our 15 steps to motivate your staff, keep together the team you have worked so hard to build and develop your business:

1) Learn what drives each employee

Everyone is different when it comes to motivation, some will respond to financial reward, others prefer personal praise and other staff want progression opportunities. In order to motivate everyone, you need to understand what drives them.

There are several ways to find out this information, we would suggest doing it in a one-to-one scenario as they’re more likely to open up about what they do and don’t like working on, what they want to achieve and what their goals are. Listen to what they say and use the information to develop an incentive scheme bespoke to them.

2) Lead with vision

It’s vital that your employees are confident that their efforts are driving towards an overall goal. They need to understand what the end destination is. If you fail to provide a vision for your employees, you will struggle to motivate your staff long term. Company morale will fluctuate between short-term boosts and crashes.

To overcome this, ensure your employees are fully aware of what the business goals are, and provide updates to show how the business is progressing, this is a reflection of their work.

3) Provide a pleasant working environment

Employees are influenced by their surroundings, no one wants to stand around in a dark, boring space for hours on end. By having a well-lit, functional and fun workspace your employees are more likely to enjoy coming to work and working for you.

This encompasses everything from working equipment, keeping the environment clean and tidy, to just making the environment fun, whether that is getting motivational quotes on the wall, funky coloured chairs, anything that will make your employees feel happy and motivated. Research business intelligence for more information about how companies can help you with this.

4) Open-door policy

It’s important to make your employees feel valued. By having an open-door policy, it will help motivate your staff by making feel like their voice matters and their opinions will always be valued.

5) Offer rewards

Employees will want to stay working for you and your business if they have a reason to. One of the best ways to motivate your staff is by providing an incentive programme. This could be a quarterly bonus, free gym access, profit-sharing, anything that will make your employees feel they will be rewarded for doing a good job.

6) Giving them room to grow

Giving your employees room to grow and develop within the company is a great method to motivate your staff. When you give your best performing employees opportunities to grow and develop, it changes their thinking from “this is just a side job” to “this could be a fully-fledged career.”

7) Positive feedback

Positive feedback is a great way to keep your staff motivated, whether that is coming from you, their manager, or from other departments or external customers. It is important to share that with the individual.

8) Be transparent

Being transparent is a great way to build trust with your employees, and they’re much more likely to want to work for a manager they trust. Being transparent also helps them see how they’re performing and helping the business, this will help motivate your staff by helping them feel invested. So, make a point to share company data with them on a regular basis. Monthly reports, number of new clients or even a tracker for how the business is performing against their targets.

9) Flexible working

Flexible working has become much more prevalent over the last few years, with technology changing the way we can work. With cloud-based systems and most things being accessible on mobile, workers now have the ability to essentially work from anywhere, especially at home.

So, if you expect your employees to check their emails or complete parts of a project outside of office hours, it’s only fair that you allow some flexibility when it comes to the scheduling of their hours. Not having to deal with their commute in rush hour and having the flexibility to complete work at home, can help motivate your staff and improve their work/life balance.

10) Recognise their achievements

If an employee has been putting in a lot of time working on a project, or they went out of their way to help a colleague or other department, do not hesitate to praise them for all their hard work. If your employees feel that their efforts are appreciated, they will feel compelled to continue working hard for you.

11) Set SMART goals

By employing SMART goals for your employees, they will be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-related. This will help keep your staff motivated as their goals will certainly be within their reach. If the goals you set them are too aspirational, this could really affect morale as your employees won’t be able to envisage completing them and certainly not overachieving.

12) Give your employees purpose

Employees need to feel important and that what they are doing really matters for the company they’re working for. Make sure your senior managers and CEO take a personal interest in what staff do right down to the cleaner.

13) Give them autonomy

Human beings value autonomy. We all want to feel in control of our time and effort. Giving your employees autonomy also demonstrates that you trust them implicitly, which will go a long way towards forming the bond between employer and employee that you see at highly engaged businesses.

The key is giving your team a true sense of ownership over their work – not just over their most important projects, but on things like working hours and time off. The ability to exert control over their time can be as motivating as the satisfaction that comes with seeing a project through to completion.

14) Encourage friendly competition

Competition can be a great motivator but if you let it get out of hand, conflict can occur between employees.

The goal is not to get your top performers to perform better, it is also to train them to pull up everyone around them and build an efficient, KPI smashing team.

One way to inject some competition into the workplace is through gamification – i.e., introducing elements of gameplay to your team’s most important tasks. This can help to create fun and excitement around the office and motivate your staff to do more and really push themselves.

15) Be open to new ideas

You should never shun away from your employees’ ideas and suggestions, they are working in your business day after day, they will see opportunities for improvement that you and other senior members of staff may not. So be sure to listen to all ideas no matter how silly.

How Recruit Mint can help you create a motivated workforce

During our robust 17-step process we meet every candidate face-to-face. We understand that they’re much more than a CV and covering letter. By meeting them face-to-face we get to understand them, their work history, their goals, their ambitions and what motivates them in the workplace.

It is through this process that we can find you the perfect candidate who can do the job, wants to do the job, wants to work for your company and will fit into your work culture. If you want to find staff who are motivated and want to work for you, then get in touch on 01733 802300 or submit your job today.

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