Employee motivation is something that many business owners and managers struggle with. At the end of the day, with poorly motivated employees, your business is simply not going to be as productive as it should be.
You see, in many ways, motivating your employees is much like creating a sales incentive program for customers: you have to assess your current situation and identify what’s going wrong, create a plan that will resonate with your target audience, and then execute the plan.
In this case, the issue at hand is your employees aren’t working as hard as they should be, and your plan needs to be find a way that will ‘resonate’ with your employees to get them to be more motivated and productive. At that point, there’s nothing to stop you from executing the plan.
Here are five insanely effective strategies for motivating your employees that you may not have yet thought of:
Strategy #1 – Allow More Breaks
Yes, you read that right.
In fact, taking a short five to ten minute break each hour can help to people recharge both physically and mentally. Not only should you strongly encourage employees taking short hourly breaks, you may even want to mandate it if you feel you should.
Of course, you will want to make sure that employees honor actually keeping the breaks short to just five or ten minutes and not any longer than that, but the fact of the matter is that short and frequent breaks can help people stay more fully awake and aware throughout the work day, which can help them to stay more motivated and focused throughout thew ork day too.
Strategy #2 – Set Rewards
It’s a classic trick, but it works: motivate your employees to work harder by setting incentives.
You can set daily, weekly, or monthly incentives as well. For example, you can have rewards such as time off, an extra pay bonus, a gift card to a nice restaurant, and so on.
It’s also better to have multiple rewards set up rather than just one. The reason for this. Is because if you just set on reward, some of your employees may feel that it’s not possible for them to attain it, and therefore not even try to.
Many businesses use a monthly rewards program. You can have three different rewards for sales or productivity on a monthly basis, for example, and you should start to see each of your employees working harder.
Strategy #3 – Ask What Your Employees Want
Have you ever tried simply asking your employees what they want? You may be surprised to find out that many employees want more than just a raise.
Specifically, you could ask them what they think would make their job easier. You can also ask this to each employee individually or you can ask it in a group setting in a meeting.
However, it may be a better idea to talk to your employees on an individual basis and to come up with a personal plan with each one that will help them to work at their very best.
Not only will your employees appreciate their boss or manager working with each of them on an individual basis, but doing so could be just what they each need as well.
Strategy #4 – Provide Recognition
This is another very common strategy that businesses use: provide recognition to those who perform the best.
Many businesses use an ‘employee recognition’ system where the employee with the best performance or sales of the month is rewarded with their name or photo on the wall where it’s highly visible to all.
Strategy #5 – Model What You Want
Do you want your employees to work hard? Then you’re going to have to as well.
It really is that simple. As their manager or boss, your employees will not only respect you more if they see that you’re working hard, but they’ll also feel much more motivated to emulate your behavior.
At the end of the day, modeling the exact same kind of productivity that you want out of your employees is one of the best motivational strategies that you can use.
The Best Strategies For Motivating Your Employees
Even if you try just one or two of the above motivation strategies or others like them, you should see a moderate to dramatic increase in your employee’s productivity.