In every form of a working atmosphere, effective motivation is an important quality to establish early and continuously. We have all found moments in our daily work routines when recharging the energy and the brainpower to continue performing can be a struggle. Knowing that everyone comes to a slow point, it’s crucial for business owners and management to recognize the best ways to motivate their employees.
Companies that are fortunate to have a steady group of employees typically have a leader in place that offers them a reason to work hard and give every task their full ability. Successful employee motivation techniques reflect how well a business’s upper management has taken the time to know and recognize their employees’ ambition and how to utilize it to everyone’s advantage. Being a great boss, owner, or manager involves more than just staying on top of your employees, you must provide them with practical incentives to perform for themselves and the business.
Not all approaches for motivation work for everyone. You might find that your overall company culture is unique, and the typical forms of motivation don’t match your business structure. It may be beneficial to learn how other companies have created their own ways to motivate their employees and gain new ideas on generating motivational groundwork for your employees. We have asked other business owners and higher management to contribute their ways of motivating their employees.
#1
Thomas Bradbury, Technical Director at GetSongkey
Rewarding your employees can reward your business too. Employee productivity has a direct impact on the performance of your business. When employees are not happy with their working conditions, then you risk a decline in productivity. Employees are less likely to really give it their all.
The good news – there are ways to keep everyone happy and feeling motivated.
I’ve found that an employee reward and employee of the month system offer a good combination. Make sure your employees are aware of this, as they will then feel motivated to give it their all.
Start by introducing a feature like the employee of the month. Set up a photo in the office of the employee who had the most sales, most positive comments, or really shone among other employees during the past month.
Do not only give privilege to this particular employee. Have a reward system in place – this way, your employees can be awarded for good performance at the workplace.
Bottom Line: Introduce a reward system for your employees to help keep them motivated and working hard.
Whether remote (like myself) or with a physical office space/ team, every business owner or manager should conduct regular one-on-one meetings. This is a great way to stay up to date on the latest happenings on projects and a great way to stay up to date with your team. I budget a few extra minutes with my team on every call to talk about them – their family, their interests, their favorite movies, and so on.
I know that there are times when my team goes above and beyond what is expected, to deliver on tight deadlines or to really perfect a project that we have on the go. To reward them, I take note of their favorite hobbies, and in cases where they have done so, I do a little online shopping. Most recently, one of my writers has worked round the clock to deliver a huge amount of really awesome posts for a series of guest posts that we’re doing, and so, to reward him, I preordered Cyberpunk 2077 for him. I know that it’s something he has been excited for since it was first announced, and so I’ll be sending him a copy when it arrives.
I know that as important as work output is, downtime is just as important for my team, so I try my best to support them and their hobbies so that after they’ve really enjoyed some great downtime, they come back a stronger, more focused part of the team!
Make employees feel welcomed and valued by being transparent about your diversity numbers. If diversity is a goal, be clear and accountable with your team about the progress you’re making along the way. When a company isn’t transparent about everything from new hires to growth plans, employee happiness and engagement can take a hit. If you want to discuss the ongoing performance with the employees, discuss it privately, and when one of your employees makes a particularly outstanding presentation, sale, or othernotable achievement praise it publically. Set up a series of smaller rewards throughout the year to motivate ongoing performance excellence.
It is not a secret that efficient and effective communication is crucial for remote teams. When communication is poor, a number of problems arise. That’s why making sure your employees understand what your timelines, deliverables, expectations, and requirements are and check in regularly whether everyone is on the same page.
In addition to that, providing valuable and constructive feedback increases dispersed/remote IT teams’ engagement and supports their learning and development. Not only should you give feedback systematically, but also highlight both strengths and opportunities for improvement. What’s more, try to talk about the situation, not the individual. Only by discussing the situation rather than bringing out your personal opinion can you help to show that you focus on fixing the problem instead of the developer’s personality.
Laura Handrick, Human Resources Expert at Choosing Therapy
I have found out the best way to motivate employees is one-on-one through individual conversations with managers, when those same managers recognize and acknowledge the individual’s capabilities, accomplishments, and strengths.
In a large firm, consider giving managers authority to spot bonus employees with amounts ranging from $10-$100 based on individual and group achievements. One-off recognitions that don’t fall under a corporate program feel more authentic to the employee.
Perhaps one employee receives four movie tickets for their family, while another receives dinner for two for them and their significant other. Corporations need to trust that their managers will distribute the money equitably based on work-related accomplishments.
Managing a program like this is simple — each manager simply gets a budget based on the number of employees they have, and then the manager is trusted to distribute the funds in ways that are meaningful to their workers.
We have a bonus program that allows us to reward employees based upon individual and team performance. In our industry, being proactive in getting results for our client’s matters. Every team member contributes to the process. The more onboard each person is, the better and faster result that we get for our clients. Our success as a team is reflected in the number of bonuses that we are able to give at the end of the year. Also factored in is the amount of time that employees have been a part of the team. We want our employees to be happy and to stay with us, so this bonus structure rewards their loyalty.
We know that our bonus program is right for our employees because we are a smaller team, I am able to seek feedback often. Employees at the firm look forward to the year-end bonuses and use them as a goal to go the extra mile daily.
We have found that year-end bonuses make the most sense for our industry. This has kind of been a no-brainer since the beginning, but we’ve made it a more important goal for the whole team to get behind.
First, it starts with before your new staff begins working for you: get their photo and home address and have a well-crafted welcome to the team box sent to them before their first day. This box will get them excited to be a part of the team. When you design the box, avoid getting a brown box and just putting random things you’d find in the normal office setting. You want to be intentional and have a theme for the box, have the image and text wrapped around the exterior of the box, so the theme permeates throughout.
Here are some items that you could add to the box:
-A good set of noise-blocking headphones with a mic that has your company logo on one side and Rockstar on the other side
– A huge coffee mug with their name on it so they can wake up each day ready to rock
– A company jacket for those cool winter days while they work remotely
– Their name etched into a set of building blocks that has the company or team values etched in as well.
– A mousepad with the team photos on it (including their photo that they submitted). Then during the welcome session, your team member will start to use the items and be reminded each day that they are a part of the team.
Ask your staff which incentives they would like for the new award program, and they don’t have to be actual objects or cost money. Remember that your team will not all be motivated the same way. In fact, what works for some people on your team won’t work for everyone. Once you know which items will help motivate them individually, add that in after each client-facing survey. For example, you just asked a client to rate the customer service that your staff just gave, after the rating asks them to select from the list of incentives that the individual would like to be presented after achieving a perfect 10 rating.
From an internal staff motivation, try the high five approach. Encourage your staff to submit a thank you for individuals that contribute or collaborate beyond their job description, go out of their way for others, or help create innovative ideas (in addition to any other areas you’d like to increase awareness of). Have a digital way of tracking it, so the person gets the alert, their boss sees it, and it can be used during their quarterly reviews and building up to the individual’s preferred incentive.
Pride and performance.: Employees should always have performance goals and be rewarded for hitting those goals. However, you must have employees who take pride in their work before performance bonuses are factored in. If you don’t do a good job vetting and have an office or factory full of people just going through the motions, bonuses aren’t going to motivate them. If your company’s reward system isn’t encouraging people to go beyond their job description, take a long look at that system. If it works for some and doesn’t work for others, ask the underperforming what roadblocks are in their way. It could be the company culture. It could be problems at home. It could be apathy. You have to pinpoint these issues and adapt accordingly, or risk having a company filled with people who have no vested interest. No vested interest equals high turnover equals a lot of wasted time recruiting and training.
Aiko Houghton, Marketing and Community Manager of Loftera
At Loftera, we are always testing the best ways to reward our employees, besides offering Amazon gift cards, discounts, what we’ve found to be most effective is adding a small, symbolic commission based on working input. This lets our employees know we truly value their hard work, which provides an additional motivating factor. We also make sure to communicate all future ambitions across each employee individually. That way we also better understand the exact needs, requirements, and future vision of our team, which helps break down many other factors, the rewarding program included.
Incentives are one of the best ways to motivate employees because it gives them something to work towards. Of course, you can’t just make the incentive absolutely anything, your employees actually need to want it. What we did was we spoke to our employees when planning our incentive program to determine what they’d like the most. It started with a broad discussion, which we broke down into a list of ideas, and then we finalized the final incentive ideas. In the end, we decided a monetary incentive was the best option for us due to the wide range of expectations from our employees. Rather than providing something specific which some employees might not necessarily appreciate, creating a monetary incentive allows them to be able to spend their reward as they wish. I feel that the process we went through really helped us determine the right incentive for our employees rather than going through a trial and error process which wastes time. Our employees are happy, we’re happy, and motivation seemed to improve a lot.
