5 WAYS TO MOTIVATE YOUR EMPLOYEES AND MOVE THEM FORWARD
Contrary to what you might imagine, good results inside a business are not the sole signs of success within a manager’s job. On the contrary, what is a manager without the impeccable performance of his or her team? Performance is tightly linked to their emotional and psychological status, and the success of a manager can be usually measured by the local team’s morale. Happy, productive, and motivated workers are the shining example of a manager’s good work.
Now that you know this, here’s the 5-million-dollar question: How to motivate employees at work? How do you motivate your team? How to inspire them to do their best in their job? How to motivate your employee and keep him or her as a healthy component of your company? Don’t know how? Fear not. Answers are simple, and we’ll save you some time and research with this employee motivation article. Just follow these 5 tips and we guarantee you that things will work out soon.
Show your trust on them
Inspire someone by simply showing them something of great value: trust. This is the first secure way to motivate and inspire your workers: simply by demonstrating them that you have faith in their capacity to get the job done. A good way to do this is through assignments and granting them more responsibilities and (fair!) challenges that might help them take the leap to the next level. People will feel valued, as you’re showing trust on them and confidence on their skills. This will inspire people to give the best of themselves, as they truly want to show that they’re worthy of all the attention they’re receiving.
Careful: there’s a fine line between keeping a watch on their work and hovering their shoulders at every step they make. This is counterproductive; it shows the opposite of what we want – mistrust – and you make them feel nervous and, in turn, insecure of themselves. Employees can only give their best when they’re not afraid of challenges. Granting them more autonomy and responsibility will help them rise to the occasion.
Reward a well-done job
Another essential question: how to motivate your employees to work their best and increase your company’s production line? Believe it or not, but the answer is quite simple.
The best way to motivate employees is through a reward to their well-done jobs; mind you, not just effort, but a complete and perfectly made job.
Not only will this raise their morale and make them feel as if their abilities are more than useful: it’ll be likelier for them to repeat their good performance and do anything it takes to earn the prize they desire. This is actually the oldest, most trusted and truest of all psychological principles in the workplace: positive reinforcement. Don’t overdo it, though; keep your prizes along the size of a free lunch, an afternoon off, tickets, gift cards… You know, something you can afford and that they’d value nonetheless. If you can afford larger prizes, then kudos to you: it will incentivize your employees even more and tickle their brains and inspire them to work more, not to mention that it also brings along a small, yet friendly competitive atmosphere into the workplace that will encourage them to improve and stand out as workers.
So, to sum it up, keep a motivating line of rewards and incentives up and going to keep your workers not only happy, but driven by the fruits their work might bear in the future.
Help your employees via investment
Just like you raise your employees’ self-esteem by entrusting them responsibilities and rewards, you can also inspire them by investing in them. Offer them the opportunity to get their tuition paid, offer them tutoring programs, personal coaching, job shadowing with people in higher positions, and so on. This sends a powerful message: you care about their future and their jobs. As a matter of fact, many big companies do hold meetings with their employees to know more about their career goals and to get sure they’re still on track. If your business doesn’t have this yet, maybe it’s a good time to start this practice in your company.
Not only will this help your employees have an inspired motivation to remain in your company rather than on be the lookout for better offers elsewhere, but will also help you get to know more about your own staff. This kind of information will allow you to manage your personnel better and more efficiently than before.
So don’t think it twice and invest some time on your employees. They’ll grow, and your company will grow with them. And most importantly, they will stick around far longer than what you can imagine. People will always stick to someone who inspires them continuously and makes them feel valuable.
Give their job a purpose
Every element of your company matters, no matter how big or small the task is. Whether is packaging, managing, serving or carrying out menial tasks, we all want a job that matters, and that’s something you must always keep in mind, not only as a company manager, but as a company worker as well.
Let your employees know how valuable they are to your company. You can do this by showing them the results of their performance (especially if they’re good) and they’ll feel prized and inspired to keep going. Highlight how important their place inside your business is, remind them of their major contributions, and give credit where credit is due. This will boost their self-confidence and sense of achievement, and will motivate them to work even harder.
Make them part of big decisions
No one likes it when they exclude you from big projects, especially if you work for them. People feel ostracized and even unimportant, which is something you should never do. So, how to inspire your team and avoid this kind of situations? Simply by asking for their opinions. Just doing this will create them a sense of belonging in the company and make them feel like they matter, especially if their opinions do affect your company’s decisions.
This is actually a part of employee investment, albeit instead of giving them something, you ask them to give something truly special to you: their opinion. Merely by doing so, you get insight of your staff once again and engender their trust, loyalty and motivation to work in your company.
To sum it up, motivate, inspire and be a great support to your workers, who’ll surely be grateful to you for all of your efforts. Inspire someone in your team by simply asking yourself what are the things that motivate me. When you place yourself in their shoes, you’ll see the answers coming to you. Why, you can even read some motivated employees’ quotes and stories in some pages to get an idea of what’s in their heads, and this way create new strategies to inspire your own workers to do their best. This is really important in today’s highly competitive world, where switching jobs has become a problem for some, and building trust and a solid foundation for employee management a great solution to keep your company together in a friendly and supporting atmosphere.
So, how do you motivate employees and create a motivational staff that will keep up and running, in a nurturing and self-supporting environment? Simply be the leader everyone needs.
