Any company knows that their employees are their greatest asset and the performance of their business is directly proportional to the value that their customers deliver. Therefore, it only makes sense that your company heavily invest in ensuring that your employees are as productive as possible The good news is that this can immediately begin today.
By applying these top five tips, not only you can motivate your employees, but you can also improve your business performance by their increase in productivity.
1. Focus on the value not the money
Everyone is motivated at a basic level by money, but many people are motivated by many other things. Among these include personal passions such as the arts or science, human rights, and sustainability. When you are able to effectively tap into these deeper motivations, your company can more effectively motivate its employees at a much higher level. Therefore, you must find what qualities motivate your employees to do good work and emphasize these verbally and through visible action.
2. Show your employees the value they create
Regardless of the role of your employees, they are essential to the company’s performance. Otherwise, you may just be better off firing them and saving the money on payroll. Therefore, it is important to demonstrate to employees that they are both important and replaceable. If they understand that they are important, they will feel valued at the firm. However, rewarding them too much may leave them to grow complacent and irresponsible if they believe that they are not replaceable.
Strike the balance by focusing on the value employees create by showing them on the individual level. This may be accomplished by either training the middle-management to effectively accomplish this, or by doing it on a granular level yourself.
3. Be friendly and courteous
When you dislike someone, you do not exactly feel emotionally inclined to help them. Being callous and downright tyrannical to employees at every level will almost always trickle down to the customer. This may not necessarily be reflected in the attitude reflected on the customer, but can be done based on the work performed.
Being friendly and courteous can begin today by simply accommodating fundamental pleasantries. You may see an immediate difference in the attitude of your employees, but be sure that they still realize that this friendliness is contingent upon their positive work. If they get the impression that you are a pushover and do not fundamentally fear the risk of losing their job due to misbehavior, then this strategy may backfire.
4. Invest in staff development and training
This does not necessarily apply to all employees, for instance, some may be stubborn for the simple reason that they do not care and there is really no amount of development and training that will change this. However, if you have employees that value life improvement and personal development, they will be more motivated to work for your company if you provide them access to the resources to enable this.
Investment does not need to be excessive such as tuition reimbursement programs, but can be as simple as a subscription to an online vocational training website, such as Udemy.
5. Ask employees for suggestions and recommendations
Many mangers do not ask employees for recommendations and suggestions with the belief that they have not thought of anything that the manger has. A belief that employees cannot come up with better ideas is classic managerial hubris that can be a virus to your organization. Not only is this thinking flawed, it can give employees the impression that they are not important to the organization.
Because lower level employees have the most interaction with customers, that are often the most likely to come up with ideas. For instance, if you are creating a restaurant, customers could be providing your employees recommendations that never are taken seriously by the management. Asking information from your employees will have a direct impact on the performance of your company by motivating your employees, but also may yield some fairly helpful insights.
To conclude…
There are many ways to motivate employees, but few companies actually implement them. Rather than providing innovative insights, this article serves as an evident reminder that the performance of your company is not shifted by your employees, but rather directed by the quality of your management. If you hire the appropriate people and motivate them to do good work, you will be able to more effectively compete in the market.
The tips that we have presented are able to be immediately implemented by you and your management associates today. There is no reasonable delay for motivating your staff in the most effective way that you possibly can.