4 Guaranteed Ways To Motivate Your Workforce
“When employee engagement goes down, turnover goes up.” -Christopher Williams, talent and performance manager at Sony Europe.
Learning how to motivate and incentivise your employees is more essential than ever. With unemployment officially at an all-time low, candidates are seeking out businesses where they feel valued, appreciated and nurtured. More importantly, they’re not stopping until they’ve found the right place.
Working in a sector that has long held a notoriously high turnover rate, engagement has always been a top priority for us. To mitigate this, over the years we’ve established a solid base of principles on which we base our employee motivation strategy, through a combination of strategic planning and experimentation.
Without further ado, here are our 4 top tried and tested tips on how to tap into what intrinsically motivates your employees…
1. Make recognition a non-negotiable priority for managers
What’s one commodity that can’t be bought but can only be earned? Trust. Once you have it from your employees, everything becomes that little bit easier. With this in mind, it makes sense to invest in the no.1 most effective way to foster trust in your team – recognition. 90% of us feel more trust towards our bosses when we’ve recently been recognized or thanked for our efforts. And when we trust, we work harder.
So how can you show your team members they’re valued? Take an overview of your current “Employee Of The Month” system. Could it be revamped to include a prize or more specific praise? You could also enlist the help of your marketing team in using social media to spotlight employees’ work.
On a less formal note, you could have each employee in your department say what they’ve accomplished, at the end of each day as part of an end-of-day team meeting. Where recognition is concerned, every little helps.
2. Encourage team bonding
When asked what the most important factor is to employees, what would you guess? A sense of fulfilment? Salary? Progression opportunities?
You may be surprised to hear that the single most motivating factor, according to a recent study, is none of these things. Interestingly, it transpires that what we all really want above all else in a work place is a team we really get along with. According to a study reported in Psychology Today, A substantial 20% of employees cite a sense of camaraderie as their number one motivation to excel at work.
We’ve long known that teamwork makes the dream work here at Prime, and are always on the lookout for new ways to boost our internal culture.
To keep peer motivation levels high, we recommend tailoring a mixture of classic and innovative strategies. A few of the golden oldies we like to implement are birthday celebration, quarterly team bonding days out, and, of course, Friday beers. Making sure to move with the times, you could also utilise social media and WhatsApp groups to keep your teams connected. Depending on your budget, you may even want to consider organizing family-friendly activity days.
However you choose to adapt your plan of action, we guarantee that boosting employee connection will see motivation and productivity levels skyrocket!
3. Keep your employees included in the bigger picture
Keeping your employees in the loop has long been known as a key way to keep employees truly motivated and engaged. When you include your employees in the broader picture of your business’ purpose and trajectory, they’re able to feel as if they’re part of something bigger. Ultimately, understanding how their actions contribute to your company’s success, gives new meaning to their work. And who doesn’t want their work to mean something? To get the good vibes going, hold quarterly meetings to give the team an overview of the business’ progress and how individual departments contribute.
Helping your employees see how their personal efforts further the growth of your company has always been a priority for us at Prime. “No matter what, I make sure to do everything I can to help my team understand Prime’s vision. You can’t expect someone to fully commit to a journey unless they know where they’re going.”
To keep momentum at pace, why not investigate opportunities for your staff to develop and gain certified training, as part of your company’s 10-year plan? By offering defined avenues for progression, you’ll show them you see their involvement as key to your business’ success.
4. Implement clear structure to gamify your team’s day-to-day
Games are addictive, as anyone who’s suddenly found themselves inexplicably over-invested in a Monopoly session will know! Game-makers design these activities with the intent to get us hooked on the mini-wins that come from inching closer to a victory. It comes as no surprise, then, that employers in the know are increasingly turning to gamification to incentivise their cohort. So what does this mean in real life? Are we expected to incorporate Twister into board meetings? Thankfully, no. It just means learning how to hack into employees’ innate desire to compete. In order to do this, two things are essential: structure and visibility.
To implement this, try breaking wider goals down into manageable targets with set timeframes. And don’t be afraid to make team (or even individual) results easy to see. Depending on the nature of your business, you may even want to consider making team results public at the end of each week/month. Trust us – the competitive drive will set in and results will be reflected in your team’s output.
Retain, Engage, Develop
It’s impossible to underestimate the value of a truly engaged cohort. From higher productivity levels to increased sales to lower turnover, it’s not an investment any committed manager can afford to miss out on.
If you’re looking to expand your team in 2019, why not get in touch for a free consultation with one of our recruiters? With in-depth expertise in their respective fields, they’re in a great position to offer you salary benchmarking support and market insights, free of charge. Just call 01376 502999.
