It’s sometimes hard to keep employees motivated. To keep them gunning forwards toward the targets that will make your business better. Life often gets in the way, and there’s not much you can do about it. But, when you’re considering the day to day performance of your workforce there will always be things you can do to ensure they perform to the required standard.
Sometimes, they’ll be doing all they can and the onus is on you to make their environment one which is better suited to higher levels of performance. Different industries require niche answers to problems. There are some which suit a lot of business areas, but if you think you occupy an industry which will have particular problems, then you’d be best looking at what’s already been done in the sector. Use this article as a starting point and hopefully you’ll see some immediate gains. Even if you’ve tried them before, looking through might help you change your perspective and think of new, better ideas.
Ensure People Get Along
You need to ensure people who work for you get along. If they don’t then their productivity is going to be affected. Usually work will be passed too and from others. Working as a team is incredibly important. You might want to look at some Root Cause Analysis if you’re having trouble. Mediation between two or more people will also help, ensuring you get to the bottom of the problem. It might be a simple exercise of moving people around the office so that they’re in spaces where they get along with those around them. Keeping this up regularly can be a draining task and people should generally act like adults and get along but where there are serious grievances you need to act upon them, otherwise people won’t trust you to do your job and things will always be against you from then.
Give Them Some Flexibility
Your business might be the most important thing in the world to you, but it won’t be to them. You need to respect that. Flexibility is always needed and benefited from. Those jobs where there is little flexibility usually means a disinterested workforce. Flexibility can mean a lot of things, usually dictated by your industry. For example, if your team works on passive work that they can do at any time, allow them to come into the office when they like. So long as they make up the hours to the correct amount each week and stay on target it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps consider the ability to work from home, and let them do it once a week. Not having to pay commuter fees for a day or two a week makes a big difference, as does allowing someone the ability to work from their own home in a lot more comfort. This bodes well for you too, because if something bad happens, like coronavirus, you can ask your team to work from home instead ensuring business continuity.
Incentivise performance
It’s incredibly important to incentivise good performance. Otherwise, why push yourself? Why try to hit higher targets? You can do this in multiple ways. First off, a financial bonus. Most companies use this kind of thing. The issue is setting a high standard which is also achievable. You don’t want to set unrealistic targets because it’ll annoy people. Neither do you want to set the bar low. Remember, it has to be consistent. Whatever you give to one person has to be given to the other, so if you set the bar low and act on it you could end up giving out a lot of money. This is something well worth spending some time getting right. You could also incentivise in other ways, like days off, or gifts and vouchers. Again, the key is, whatever you do, to ensure that it is consistent.
Take A Step Back
It’s incredibly important to take a step back from time to time, do this with your team. Take an away day in the middle of the week where you can embark upon a form of team building. Allowing people to better know each other means a better working relationship. There are a lot of things you can do. There are even businesses designed to help and run these events for you. You can go off-piste and do your own thing too like paintballing, a simple restaurant meal or perhaps some sport. Whatever it is, you need to ensure it’s something where people interact and speak to improve those relationships.
- DISCLOSURE: This post has been written by an outside source.
