Do your staff sit at their desks looking glum, constantly moaning and slacking when it comes to their day-to-day tasks? Rather than punish them, you might want to look into why they are like this. Perhaps morale has dropped for one reason or another and they are feeling demotivated.
It is your job, as their employer, to motivate them – but in order to do this you need to know what is demotivating them.
This could be for a number of reasons, so you should start by asking for their feedback. Perhaps they feel like they are being worked too hard and paid too little? Maybe they don’t feel like they have had adequate training? Or, possibly, they don’t feel like they are having the opportunities to enable them to progress.
Ask the right questions and the answers will enable you to make the relevant changes. Once you know where the issues are, here are a few ways you could improve the motivation of your workforce:
Incentives
If your employees don’t feel that they are being appreciated for their hard work, why not offer them incentives? This will encourage them to continue to work to the best of their ability and reward them for doing so. Incentives could be in the form of a bonus, an extra day holiday, a party, an experience – whatever you think is best for your company and its staff.
Social event
Introducing social events will increase staff morale, but it will also enable them to get to know each other outside of the 9 to 5. This means they can bond and form closer relationships, which can only benefit the company in the long run as they start to feel more comfortable working together.
Hire a motivational speaker
You can stand up and tell your staff why they need to be more motivated but you might not have the same impact that a motivational speaker would. Your staff are likely to be more receptive to an outsider than the person who owns the business they work for. You may want to take a look at services like Speakers Corner to see who you could invite – all of these speakers will be able to inspire your team with their stories as well as bring fresh ideas and perspectives.
Perks
We spend more time at work than we do at home, so we want it to be a place that staff enjoy being rather than dread. One way to do this is to break up the monotony that can come with the working days by introducing a few perks – this could be a free healthy breakfast, a pool table or ping pong table, or even a bar for Friday night drinks.
Training
Providing your staff with the relevant training will benefit both you and them. It will make them more confident and, therefore, more comfortable in their role, which means the work they produce will be of better quality.
Motivating your staff isn’t difficult, you just need to invest some time to do it and ultimately it will benefit the company in the long run as morale, and therefore productivity, goes up.