The Top 70 Ways To Keep Your Employees Motivated
When aiming to grow your company, you can employ all of the advanced systems and procedures you want to try to improve it, but if your workers aren’t motivated, it’s likely that you’re not going to be able to get very far. There is a multitude of potential reasons why your workers might be lacking the motivation they need to do their best work. They could be sensing a feeling of unappreciation, bored of their regular responsibilities, or unhappy with the work flexibility offered to them.
If looking to boost your worker’s efficiency, see these 70 simple tips to motivate your employees to do their best work.
1. Incentivize and Challenge
When looking to improve your worker’s productivity, one of the most effective methods to do this is through adding an element of incentive or competition. Try to make a game out of the completion of regular work tasks, and offer rewards when certain goals or achievements are met. This can increase overall employee engagement, which is an essential component of general workplace satisfaction and motivation.
2. Recognize and Emphasize Accomplishments
The practice of recognizing your worker’s accomplishments shouldn’t be a rare occurrence. Acknowledging and congratulating great work should be done regularly. Moments such as these can lift up your company members, and provide others with an example of your expectations and their importance.
3. Convey Trust
It’s important to note that micromanaging does not convey trust. Constantly correcting or taking over tasks does not either. If you give a worker a task and they decide to do it in a different manner than you would have, try to trust them enough to do a great job. Showing trust whenever possible is imperative in augmenting your worker’s sense of productivity and confidence.
4. Encourage Positivity
How the leader acts, the rest will copy. If you, intentionally or not, consistently act like a grump, it’s likely that your workers will too. Try to set the tone for a supportive and productive workplace through encouraging positivity.
5. Try to Allow Flexibility As Much As Possible
In a recent study, about 84% of working parents stated that flexibility was the most important thing for them when looking at a potential job. To accommodate this reasonable need, try to be as flexible as possible about where, how and when your employees work, as long as it doesn’t compromise the quality of what they produce.
6. Offer a Chance to Lead
Providing your workers with an opportunity to really lead, not telling them they are in command only to come in and micromanage, can do wonders in improving their overall confidence and effort. Try to offer such opportunities to willing individuals to see their confidence and engagement soar.
7. Ask for Feedback
Try to get up to date feedback from your workers. This can be done through sending out things like anonymous email surveys to workers, and can offer an accurate picture as to how your internal business operations are actually doing.
8. Outline A Purpose
Workers need to know that what they do is important. This is essential in promoting a general sense of belonging and happiness among those at your company. Make sure to let your workers know what the actual purpose and relevance of their work is, and be sure to highlight it as imperative.
9. Support New Ideas
It’s important to remember that you’re likely not the only individual at your company with ideas. Attempt to support, encourage and if possible, implement the various ideas your workers have. In most circumstances, both workers and businesses can get a lot of benefit from simply testing a new idea.
10. Promote Work-Life Balance
In a recent study, it was found that employees who believed that they had a good work-life balance worked about 21% harder than individuals who didn’t. Insist on a good work-life balance among your workers. Make sure that they take breaks. Refuse to permit them to do work after hours if unnecessary. Using a digital employee time clock can help in making this an easier task.
11. Show the End Game
Not only do workers they deserve to know the purpose of their work, but they also need to know what they’re actually working towards, and why it’s important. As much as possible, also try to emphasize that team unity is essential for this end game. Likewise keep them updated on their collective progress, and its impact.
12. Give A Chance to Rest
While this may sound odd, if you can institute a designated resting area and time at your company, you’d be shocked at how many individuals, and how much work, can receive benefit from it. Consider implementing a system where workers can have a chance to take a beneficial break, one that can assist in stimulating their effort and alertness afterwards.
13. Be Transparent
Out of all things, it’s important to be honest. Otherwise, your workers won’t be able to trust you, and it’s obviously difficult for anyone to work amidst a sense of fear and distrust.
14. Set Collective and Individual Goals
Have prioritized project and department goals for your company. In doing this, it’s important to make sure that you also have smaller goals that are more easily attainable, otherwise it may be easy for workers to feel failure and disparity at taking so long to accomplish them.
15. Empower Others
It's reasonable to assume that no one likes or wants to feel powerless. Give your workers power through involving them in important decisions, or by allowing them to try to take leadership roles in a periodical and appropriate manner.
16. Focus on And Respect Individuals
It’s important to remember that your employees are actual people, not faceless workers. Try to regularly communicate with and treat them as such.
17. Keep an Open Door
It’s important to remove any form of barrier that may keep your workers from wanting to talk to you about their problems. Whether it’s office hours, or lack of expression of interest in their concerns, it’s imperative to make it as easy as possible for individuals to report any problems they are having.
18. Have a Designated Morale Officer
Should you be too busy to be tasked with consistently improving and maintaining your employee’s morale, consider giving this responsibility to someone else. To boost overall worker productivity, improving morale is and should be a priority.
19. Keep Promises
Employees can have difficulty working with or trusting someone who doesn’t keep their promises. This can lead to resentment and poor productivity, especially if a worker had been promised something in regards to their career.
20. Allow Individuality
It’s important to respect personalities. For example, your idea of an open workplace may feel torturous for someone who’s introverted. Attempt to respect individual nature among your workers as much as possible and understand that your ideals may not align with theirs.
21. Listen to Them
Pay attention to your workers, remember and use their name, pose questions, and respond accordingly and appropriately when they have something to say. Try to demonstrate that you take what they say to heart. If possible, try to also take action on what they bring to you. Doing this can validate your worker’s opinions and concerns and in doing so, also promote a general sentiment of belonging among them.
22. Provide Helpful Services
Look for a service that your employees would enjoy to having access to every once in a while, and offer it to them free at work. This can alleviate some of your worker’s other needs, and convey your gratitude to them.
23. Start Traditions
Give your workers something to look forward to with excitement, something that is special to your place of work. Things like holidays are for everyone, but making traditions at your business that workers can call their own can provide an unmatched feeling of involvement.
24. Send Thank You Notes
Writing something as simple as a note and sending it to a worker can mean much more than expected. It essentially tells the recipient that you took the time, and that you care.
25. Make Sure Everyone Gets A Mentor
While it’s very possible that not everyone at your company wants or needs a mentor, making them available can provide much needed guidance and support to those who do. Offer contact with such individuals to give a potential boost to your worker’s attitudes and efforts.
26. Use Reward Points
Consider setting up a point-based reward program that workers can use to get helpful and tangible things, such as gift cards, appliances or travel. This can incentivize workers to put forth their best efforts, as well as make them feel appreciated.
27. Reduce Boredom
While you might take a sense of comfort in routine, your workers may not. Attempt to be purposeful about making your company’s operations more engaging, and try to change things around. This can be done through doing things like moving office furniture, bringing in caterers, painting the walls different colors or changing the weekly schedule. Avoiding boredom among your workforce can only do your company good.
28. Provide Healthy Food
Make things like fresh fruits or vegetables, yogurt, and other healthy things readily available to you workers. Likewise stock your company’s vending machines with healthy options.
29. Pay Well
Try to pay your workers the most you can. It’s important to pay them what they’re actually worth. Also, not having a payroll issues is something most employees love and appreciate.
30. Don’t Deter Change
While change can be positive or negative, it's important not to fear it. If you do, you’ll inevitably be working against employees who are naturally motivated to try or incorporate new things and ideas.
31. Assist Employees in Rewarding Each Other
Impose a system in which employees can tell you about of the good attitude or work of their coworkers. This can allow them to get pleasure in knowing they helped someone else, and encourage overall productivity and positivity.
32. Celebrate Personal Achievements
Try to remember or take note of birthdays, anniversaries, or any other achievements your workers have accomplished outside of your company. This can help them feel appreciated and cared about, improving general unity among your workforce.
33. Offer Leadership Training
Give your workers an idea of the major components in the leadership world. Even if they are not as of yet in a management position, consider it early training for when they might be.
34. Give Them Stock
Make the general health of your company more relevant to them by providing them with stock through an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP). This can do great things in making sure your workers are engaged in and care about the outcomes of their work.
35. Allow Pets at Work
If possible, allow your workers to bring pets in. This is obviously not appropriate for all businesses or circumstances, but if it is, try to incorporate it.
36. Communicate What You Expect
Don’t be hesitant to engage in respectful confrontation with your workers. It’s important to communicate your expectations in a clear manner. This can assist them in feeling secure about their job and their work in the long run.
37. Encourage Continued Learning
If possible, offering to pay for part of your worker’s tuition, or providing them with different classes or training can have an extremely positive impact on their attitude towards your company. This can also build their confidence through continuously learning and improving their skills.
38. Set Examples
It’s imperative that when trying to improve your worker’s attitudes that you be the type of leader they would want to follow. Demonstrate the kind of standards your company has by working harder than they do. Make it clear through what you do, that you won’t ask anything from them that you wouldn’t ask from yourself.
39. Support Creativity
It’s important that your workers feel validated and comfortable. Insist on allowing creativity through allowing for creative projects, group events, or even designated creative areas where such expression can be permitted to be on display.
40. Allow Laughter
If your workforce is laughing, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Unless it’s directly interfering with the completion of important tasks, you shouldn’t discourage it.
41. Make Unity Goals
When making goals for your company, don’t forget to include the essential component of unity. It’s essential that individuals at your company work together well, after all, a team that is unified produces more and builds your business better.
42. Make Rewards Achievable and Reasonable
If you have an incentive or reward system at your company that only includes seemingly impossible work to complete, it isn’t really an effective reward system. Try to make it easier for workers to begin receiving the benefits of smaller rewards so they are reaffirmed on the value of their efforts, and in turn, desire to continue to the larger rewards and tasks.
43. Make Sure Your Company Stays Up to Date
If your business is dependent on junky equipment or outdated computers, it’s only inevitable that your workers will experience frustration using them. Attempt to keep the tools your workers use as up to date as possible. Using the best quality of tools available also instills pride among employees.
44. Offer Bonuses
Workers should absolutely receive benefit in their career for any great work, loyalty, or continued success they contribute to your business. Try to find a way to incorporate some form of reward or advancement for engaged workers, through things like tiered pay levels, exclusive responsibilities or title and salary adjustments. Even if you’re not immediately able to move a worker up on the ladder, there must be a semblance of effort to give them a sense of career movement or improvement.
45. Discipline Privately
It’s essential to never publicly shame an employee. If you have an issue, deal with the people involved in private. Never shout at, take down, or directly criticize an employee while others are present. The practice of communicating individual issues with workers while in front of others is one that can easily convey a message of ignorance and negativity, and is certainly not helpful towards your workforce’s outlook on your company.
46. Praise Publicly
Making the praise or recognition of an individual's great work a public matter is nothing to discourage. Openly congratulating and celebrating these types of achievements can be an imperative component in both encouraging and setting an example for your entire workforce.
47. Reward Safety
Should it apply appropriately, give incentives to individuals at your company that regularly adhere to safety precautions or regulations in the workplace. It’s important to equate safety with actual value, and doing so can improve your worker’s awareness of their regular actions while encouraging better overall safety practices.
48. Stand by Your Workers
It’s essential to protect your team. They deserve to know that you believe in them and their work, trust their judgement, and will stand by them in the face of anything undeserved.
49. Remove Nepotism
Almost nothing is more destructive to motivation as unfairness is. Having your workers under the impression that they won’t get promoted because they’re not a relative or friend can cause a serious sense of unbelonging among your workforce. It’s important that your workers know that promotions and rewards are based only on hard work and qualification.
50. Employ What Works
It’s usually the case that the latest management approach isn’t the most effective one. Only use management approaches and systems that work with your employees, not the random techniques someone uninvolved in your business reports as the hot or new trend.
51. Ask Employees What They Need
If you’re not sure what your workers want, asking them isn’t the worst idea. Most people appreciate being able to share their opinion, and such an opportunity can provide a sense of validation and value.
52. Improve Participation
Not every individual contributes to events or meetings in the same way. Personalities and openness tend to vary from person to person. With this in mind, try to find a way that allows for everyone to participate in a way that they are comfortable with. Don’t only give your attention to the loud or bold.
53. Use Neutrality
Forgo emotions or favoritism when making decisions about your workforce. Don’t allow for conflicts or challenges to be created through the purposeful decisions of lifting one worker up and bringing another down based on personal relationship.
54. Try Team Building Activities
As unity should be your goal, holding team building activities must be a priority and regular occurrence at your company. Make sure that they’re fun, engaging and seem as if they are a reward in and of themselves.
55. Work Among Your Employees
When trying to convey relatability and openness to your workers, doing work alongside them can be helpful. This can let them know that you both understand and relate to what they experience.
56. Use Unique Rewards
As it’s very possible that you don’t have a much money to use as an incentive for your workers, try to look for equally stimulating rewards that don’t require as much allocation of resources. Finding other methods to reward employees through unusual or inexpensive means can be just as beneficial as any other incentive if done properly.
57. Reward Groups That Do Well
While focusing on and congratulating an individual is critical, motivating teams and groups is just as important. Reward groups of workers for jobs well done through group-based incentives.
58. Make Feedback Easy and Safe
Making it easy for workers to report their feedback or concerns is important. It’s also essential to note that this shouldn’t always be through a face-to-face employee review meeting, as this can reduce the accuracy and honesty of the depictions given. Use the common suggestion box method or any other form of anonymous reporting system to improve the quality of remarks given.
59. Get Teachers
Bringing instructors or experts into the workplace can do wonders for your worker’s overall attitude. Provide free and helpful training where they work, to improve their overall impression of your company.
60. Reward Healthy Practices
It’s important to know that healthy workers are less likely to be tired, worn out, or needing to take sick days. Employ a system in which healthy choices are rewarded, such as incentives for biking or walking to work when appropriate.
61. Don’t Patronize
Insincerity is upsetting and unmotivating to most. In reality, it’s generally perceived as insulting. Make sure that your praise of great work is genuine, as well as free from any type of manipulation.
62. Guard Workplace Culture
Don’t just assume that your workplace’s positive culture will naturally survive. Check its status regularly, and seek to improve any issues found.
63. Find What Motivates
As people are usually motivated by different things, determining what works in terms of improving engagement across an entire workforce is pivotal. Try to adjust and specify your encouragement efforts for each individual at your company, and likewise understand what deters them from wanting to put forth effort.
64. Give an Allowance
Implementing an allowance for things like books or office decorations can be helpful in boosting overall worker attitude. When they feel attended for and that your company is able to meet their needs, they will likely be happier and more involved. Consider allocating a fixed amount for employees to use each year.
65. Provide Development Training
Send workers to training that teaches skills that are not only about job-specific topics, but also about things such as reducing procrastination and managing time. This can help them in being more successful people in general, as well as improve their efficiency.
66. Avoid Doing Things Without Warning
While you may enjoy surprises, your employees likely don’t, especially if it has to do with their job. If massive changes to your company’s operations are coming, let them know ahead of time, and what things are being considered. Announcing a big change one day without any advance warning can be upsetting and stressful.
67. Remove Systems That Fail
It’s important to remember that your loyalty should be to your workers, not your preferred systems or procedures. If things aren’t working well, communicate your willingness to adapt regular procedures for their sake. Having to deal with an inefficient system can be demoralizing for workers, as well as make them feel powerless.
68. Challenge Workers to Solve A Problem
If faced with a problem, consider giving it to your workers to solve. This can show them that you trust and value them enough to have such a responsibility.
69. Create A Board
Allow your employees to select individuals to form a committee that can function to directly report employee concerns to management. This can be extremely helpful to some, as not every employee is comfortable going to the boss themselves.
70. Use Cross Education
Train and educate employees on other job positions, if they are interested. This can help them in becoming even more invaluable to your company, through teaching them how to effectively serve in various positions should they ever need to.
Your workers are an essential and extremely valuable component of your business operations. When trying to encourage them to do their best work, increasing overall workforce engagement, positivity and support is pivotal. While different needs can vary by industry and company, worker engagement is among the most important needs of any business. Be sure to incorporate as much understanding and consideration into your worker’s potential needs as possible, as the more they are taken care of, the better the quality of their work will be.
