One of the major components of running and expanding your small, medium or large business is the presence of staff. With a growing business, it is usually close to impossible to look after the growing number of clients, their needs and expectations and ensuring a smooth delivery of your products and services. No matter how many employees you have working for your business, it is necessary to ensure that they have high levels of morale, feel part of the team, valued for their contributions and most importantly, actually like their role in the business. Motivation can go a long way for your business and the overall productivity of your staff. This is coupled with the idea that happier employees who actually enjoy their job are much more likely to complete tasks to a high standard and continue to do so, which is a great way to boost sales and profits as a product of the team’s hard work.
Dale Carnegie famously quoted that “People work for money but go the extra mile for recognition, praise and rewards.” This is very important to consider when you start to hire staff as a reminder that praise, recognition and rewards can go a long way and thus produce better results. It also means that many staff are intrinsically motivated as opposed to being extrinsically motivated, meaning that they are driven internally with factors like recognition and acknowledgement and not solely by money and bonuses. So, how are some good ways to motivate your staff and transform the overall energy to positive and upbeat around the office? MLK Marketing takes a closer look.
1. To Be Happy, Your Workplace Must “Look Happy”
You’re probably thinking what on Earth a happy looking workplace must look like. You are not alone. This was actually something that baffled many of our staff when it was proposed to them but after a little explaining, each staff member started to warm up to the idea. It is really important to consider the physical settings in your workplace, and as a business owner, it is usually your decision how you would like the styling to be like. A great place to start for decorating your workplace is to consider the colour of paint.
Colours and human psychology interact on a deeper level than what we may be aware of, as it has been previously documented that dark and dull colours can often lead to low mood and lower levels of motivation. This is something that definitely needs to be eliminated from the workplace, as positive energy and emotions need to be present during work hours to achieve maximum levels of productivity. Instead, consider light, upbeat and refreshing colours that will not only make people feel a lot better in the room, but will also work to make your space look bigger and better presented.
Apart from paint and accessory colours, it has also been stated that the presence of greenery in your workplace is a great way to increase productivity (as well as produce fresh air!) Just take a look at Google and how they decorate their work spaces. Make an effort to introduce some greenery in the form of plants and flowers to make your office well received by staff and to create a great ambience in which work can get done to a higher standard while your workplace looks great!
2. Who Doesn’t Love A Good Story?
For any employee who is new to the team and fresh in the field, it is always a great place to start when you tell them past success stories. These stories do not need to be about the achievements of your business and can be about other businesses in your relevant industry and prominent figures within your field. By doing so, you can motivate staff to work towards goal and make them acknowledge that such achievements are indeed possible when hard work and enthusiasm are put together. Past success stories are a great way to set as example to staff and can even be used as a framework that can be used to reach current goals and achieve even higher success rates.
However, talking about past successes of your business is also a wonderful way to motivate staff and set relevant and achievable goals. Such success stories could be something along the lines of reaching an all time high in sales and generating the largest amount of profit for the year, or achieving industry awards that recognise your services and products. Sending the message to your staff that set goals are achievable is a great way to make staff work towards achieving bigger and better results for the future.
3. Recognise And Acknowledge Employee Efforts.
Employees that are valuable to your business are valuable for many reasons, but the main reason is that they are hard working. Employees are invaluable in any case, and therefore their efforts and contributions should not go unnoticed. By acknowledging their efforts, you are encouraging the continuation of their strong work ethic. As their employer, you can devise a kind of recognition program where you can keep track of measurable achievements such as sales, lead generation, or hours worked over time and reward them for it.
In order for your staff to feel acknowledged, it is also a good idea to let them write down reasonable rewards that they would like should they be chosen as the “employee of the month” or any other title you would like to hand out as part of the recognition program. This will elicit feelings of cohesion and can also motivate other members of staff to strive for higher levels of productivity.
4. Communication Is Key.
More often than not, many employees may feel intimidated by their managers, or supervisors, and this can interfere with the amount of questions asked and the level of assistance requested
when staff are unsure in any given situation. This can cut down the morale and cohesive nature of a team, and cause broken lines of communication within the business. In order to increase staff motivation and make the most of the resources available within the business, managers, supervisors and even business owners can make efforts to communicate with the employees to determine how they are finding their job, whether they have any concerns or if they would like to speak about any products or services that are offered in order to also improve customer service.
Direct communication as opposed to emails and minimal phone contact can be a terrific method of making employees feel genuinely heard and listened to, as well as improve their confidence for future interactions.
5. Motivate Through Responsibility.
Sometimes, staff can be demotivated with the repetition of their job, where they feel that not all of their acquired skills and expertise and not being fully utilised. This can often lead to employees being bored, uninspired and not as productive as they can be. A greater sense of responsibility, ownership of their work and leadership in specific group projects or delegated tasks can do wonders for motivation and overall work ethic. By giving staff increased responsibility, you are also acknowledging that they are able to be versatile and recognise that their skills can be put to great use.
Empower staff and increase their drive to reach business goals and continually strive for excellence when you add tasks and responsibilities to their current role. By adding responsibility, benefits to the business can also be achieved as increased productivity can lead to higher levels of sales and profits and highly motivated staff can create a positive working environment that can benefit all staff on all levels of operation.
6. Flexibility Of Hours
As humans, we need to achieve the all important work and life balance. This is important for our physical, mental and spiritual health. Boost the overall well being of your employees but giving them the opportunity to achieve a perfect balance between their personal life and career. By offering a flexible work schedule, you are letting your staff know that you acknowledge the other components in their lives such as their families, meaning you can also connect with employees on a deeper level. This is a terrific way to increase staff motivation and make them feel as though they are part of a caring and bonded team within their workplace.
Through this, you can achieve higher levels of employee loyalty towards the business and make them feel highly valued. For example, delegating and distributing tasks amongst the team members is a great way for the flexibility to be made possible, as this frees up time and can work as a system where employees work hard to finish a shared task in order to leave early for the day. The more you take care of your employees, the higher their morale and motivation will be to reach set goals and make the business thrive. By eliminating the risk of burn out, you can also help retention rates of your staff, meaning you can keep talented and valuable employees that are beneficial to the business for a significantly longer amount of time.
MLK Marketing is a close knit team of professional web designers, developers and specialist SEOs that continually strive to reach and exceed customer expectations when it comes to marketing your business online. Stand out from the crowd with our premium SEO packages that are specifically designed to get your website catapulted to the front pages of prominent search engines including Google. Get your website designed by industry leading web designers and developers that create successful, clever and innovative designs that seamlessly incorporate your business vision and products and services into a quality showcasing platform. Contact MLK Marketing today on 1300 720 032 to find out more information.
