4 Quick Ways to Motivate Your Employees
Recognise a Job well done
Recognition in doing daily tasks can make what to some may be an arduous task into a daily goal. Helping to create an emotional connection between employer and employee fulfils the basic need of feeling like you belong. Receiving recognition also confirms you are on the right track and should keep doing what you’re doing. Not recognising this can be detrimental to the working cogs of your day to day business. This is a cost-efficient way to influence employees as it is essentially free only taking a minute of your time. This will be further targeted by personalising the recognition. We talk about more with our next tip.
Understand what your employees like/dislike
Even though you all have the interest of working together, essentially, all employees are different. It’s important to not treat the people of your organisation as just another number. Some may be new to the workforce and entering the marketing field after completing university. Others may be a plumber who has been in the field for 25 years. We have made it clear at Gallant that everyone has different attributes to who they are. The ‘Meet the team webpage showcases this on our website. This includes fun facts about themselves, nicknames and even what they love about the field they are in. Have your monthly meetings start with a personal anecdote from one of your employees. This can easily break the tension of an early start. More can always be done in leadership and we explain more on that in the next point.
Understand the WHY – promote the WHY
Clarifying a job needed to be done by taking the time to explain the reasoning behind it ends up being more time efficient. Quickly handing off a task to someone with little direction for them to go is more likely to create a poorly done job. This mindset of understanding the why can be taken to then promote the why as well. This is not just in delegating jobs but understanding why things weren’t completed or why they may have been done differently to hat you expected. Recently one of our leaders brought in all employees for a leadership morning and showed this video.
Not just explaining to employees but asking what they took away from the video lets people share how this works into their values and how they think. The further question on this is asking “And why do you think you came to that conclusion?”. This gives you insight into their thinking and can help others to see their point of view as well rather than question it while getting their opinions heard. Being heard and included is a cornerstone of the workplace and the perfect way to include everyone is to celebrate as we move to our final tip.
Celebrate the wins – even the little ones
Work hard play hard is a timeless quote relating to this sort of mindset. It’s often hard though to truly take a moment and celebrate your success. An easy way to influence this more is to create more in office small celebrations. Planning ahead for birthdays with a personalised gift and team lunches once a month are an easy small celebration that can motivate and keep positive vibes within your office. Creating an employee of the month with a twist to your specific workplace can also make a friendly competition. This can motivate others as it creates a new goal while also having someone new to celebrate for going the extra mile.
