5 Ways to Motivate Employees You Should Know | Greatcrackers 

Employers and business managers are always interested in getting the best hands to join their teams. But building a successful business organization doesn’t stop there—and in fact, it will be impossible in a company saturated with demotivated employees.

That’s why employees’ motivation as a subject matter has remained a big concern to managers. As a result, most human resource teams and researchers are continuously searching to find out what can account for workers’ motivation aside from money. Even though that’s the first factor that registers in their hearts.

According to an article published by Statista Research Department, a worldwide survey carried out among 14000 respondents (employees) showed:

• Most employees consider work-life balance the most important organizational attribute of any company because 51% of the respondents chose that.
• Out of the identified six elements that must be in place to ensure job satisfaction, employees considered career advancement opportunities and employer ethics and values as the foremost.
• And these six organization attributes employers pay attention to get their employees engaged:

I. Work-life balance

ii. Career advancement opportunities

iii. Employer ethics and values

iv. Compensation and benefits

v. Continuous learning opportunities

vi. Organizational stability

 Interestingly, some are part of the 5 ways to motivate employees as an employer or business manager that we’ll consider in this post. 

5 Ways to Motivate Employees You Should Know

#1. Establish Work-life balance

Work-life balance is a crucial indicator that a firm has a positive company culture. And often, it tells how you, as an employer, value your employees. Just as you can get a clue of the character of a person from the way he treats people around him, it’s the same for a company.

Your company’s work culture sends a strong message to your employees and those outside. But essentially, it informs them how you value them, even while you’re committed to realizing your company’s business goals and objectives. 

A company’s culture is like the personality that sets it apart from other organizations.

That said, you may want to ask the following questions:

• Do you overwork your workers or employees?
• Do you incorporate breaks and flexible working hours to help your workers effectively manage stress?
• Do you pay attention to your employee’s mental health and well-being?

As an employer or business manager, when you positively answer those questions and make those inherent in your work environment, you make your employees feel valued. And not used as machines.

Related Post: 5 Different Types of Workplaces Now Explained (with Practical examples)

 

#2. Provide Career advancement opportunities for your workers

Aside from creating a work environment that supports work-life balance, one way to show your employees that you value them is by upskilling them. No ambitious worker wants to go stale without learning or experiencing new things at their workplace.

According to comprehensive research carried out by LinkedIn, it was discovered that 94% of employees are willing and would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development. In other words, actively committing yourself to your employees’ career development through training, seminars, workshops, courses, etc., boost your firm’s overall employee retention.

And that, in turn, also reduces the cost you may incur in recruiting and training new intake. That’s in the case whereby workers quit their job, especially for job desertification or lack of motivation.

However, facilitating the development of your staff by providing continuous learning opportunities doesn’t only motivate them. It helps you pinpoint areas in which your workers need more training, which, consequently, will improve their work performance. And, of course, your company’s productivity.

#3. Employer ethics and values

This is much related to the first point on this list of five (5) ways to motivate employees. That’s because it’s also talking about a company’s work culture. So as a business manager, you must assess the ethics and values of your company. Do they create a conducive environment for your employees to work at their best?

But to answer that question, in all honesty, you may have to examine many things because your ethics and values define how your company functions. That said, the below are reflective of your organization’s ethics and values:

• Workers’ conduct and dress codes
• Management and leadership style
• The flow of communication
• The organization structure your company adopt
• Recruitment and training of your employees
• Work and communication among workers, including employer-employee communication
• Recognition of staff and their inputs
• How your company treat and attend to customers, their needs, and queries
• Among other things

Having said that, as a business manager, you must ensure that your company’s ethics and values facilitate teamwork among your employees and boost their morale and motivation to work. And to add, you want to encourage your worker to use their initiatives and not micromanage them.  

#4. Adequately Compensate your staff and give them their entitled benefits

Who doesn’t need money? Everybody except a three-year-old girl with a lot of candies set before her. But as grownups, you need money to get what you want. From your basic needs to luxuries.

I mean, you practically have something to buy daily. You also have your rent and children’s tuition fees (if you have one) to pay. It’s the same for your employees as a manager.

That’s why you need to adequately and commensurately remunerate your workers and be on time. Little wonder Henry Fayol, the father of modern management, didn’t forget to include it as one of his 14 Principles of Management. Though he captured it as Remuneration, it is the same thing.

Of course, a workman deserves wages for his labor. But if you want to motivate your employees, you must pay your employees well and on time. Because when workers are underpaid or receive later than the due date, their motivation to carry out their duties gets weakened.

Not only that. It delivers the impression that they’re not valued. And in turn, this may make them start looking for greener pastures to some other companies earlier and faster than their plan.

For instance, take the practical case of a man named Greg, who’s married and with two kids. Aside from that, Greg is a self-motivated individual that can deliver excellent results without much supervision from his superiors or supervisor.

But in the past few days, he seems to have lost motivation. His salary hasn’t been paid for the past two weeks, yet he wakes up with a long list of unsettled bills each morning.

What would you do immediately to restore Greg’s motivation to work?

#5. Build and sustain organizational stability

How stable your organization is can be deduced from the stability of employees. Are your employees brutally affected by work-related stress due to management errors or incompetence? It’s a question some business managers may not want to ask themselves.

However, the factors already discussed in this post impact your organization’s stability and that of your workers can be. But in motivating your employees and establishing their stability, you must carry out management functions effectively. By doing the following (and more):

• Provide necessary resources, technology, and tools for your staff to perform their job effectively
• Lead by example and optimism
• Get them involved in your business so that they can own your mission and goals as much as you do
• Foster team spirit and healthy interpersonal relationships among your workers by encouraging transparent communication
• Let them know you care

Fun Ways to Motivate Employees

You’d want to think that’s all there is to motivate your employees. You may be right about that. But not when you’ve not learned about some of the fun ways you can motivate your workers as a manager. That is because these activities strengthen the spirit of camaraderie among your staff while they weaken the effect of stressors inherent in a typical workplace.

Here, are some of them:

1. Make new employees feel at home and special

New employees usually have many expectations when they join your company’s team. But while they swim in the ocean of expectation and still trying to acclimatize themselves to your company, you can make them feel at home from the first day. And you can achieve this through the following fun ways:

• Get them gifts
• Get lunch for them alongside your other team members
• Celebrate them on their birthdays

2. Leverage beautiful initiatives

Incorporate programs or initiatives daily, weekly, or monthly that will push employees to work toward the company’s business goal. It could be initiatives that satisfy the recognition needs of your staff, such as giving awards or prizes like employee of the month, most punctual worker of the week, etc.

3. Adopt a hybrid working pattern

Often manual and unskilled labor are hard to be done virtually. But for those that can be done virtually, as a manager, you can work out a plan with your HR team and let those involved remotely work from home or on a hybrid. That means they’d have to come to your company’s physical office for some days. And for the remaining days of the week, they work from home.

Adopting this strategy is not only a way to tell your employees that you value work-life balance. It’s a fun way to motivate them to work at their best.

4. Make employer-employee interactions less traditional 

A traditional workspace environment can be highly strict with work schedules and interpersonal communication. Even in meetings. While formality is good, when excessively observed, it may make some employees keep their cards close to their chest on some matters.

Thus, as a business manager, you can think of ways of making your company’s work environment less tense. For example, in a business meeting, you incorporate an activity that makes your team members free and open for discussion. And could come as a light joke at the beginning, during, or at the end of the meeting.

Final Thought: 5 Ways to Motivate Employees

Now you see, while the task of motivating your employees can be somewhat daunting, it’s achievable. It becomes easy as you do that often– and by being empathetic in your leadership style.

As you know, you’re dealing with humans that have feelings. And not some machines. Again, the strategies outlined in this post can help keep your employees fresh with increased motivation.