How to Motivate Your Employees in 4 Simple Steps

As a business owner, keeping your employees happy, motivated and inspired can be a challenge. You may think that you need to make the bottom line the priority of your business, but take a moment to think, where would you actually be without your employees?

Although you may have taken the risk in starting up the business itself, invested your own money and come up with the product or service that you sell; it is your employees that are interacting with your customers on a daily basis and it is your employees who are selling your product. Ultimately, it is your employees who can boost your bottom line.

Therefore, it is vital to your business that your employees are motivated, driven, passionate and most importantly, engaged.

However, this can be easier said that done. It is not simply a case of throwing money at your employees. In today’s society, with wellbeing featuring high on people’s radar, there are several steps that you have to take to ensure you get the best out of your team.

1.   Recognise their efforts

People want to be recognised when they have done a good job. It really is that simple. You may choose to reward these efforts with a small bonus or a gift card, however, it doesn’t have to be with a monetary reward. Just saying thank you and acknowledging what they have done can often be enough; especially if this is carried out in front of your other employees.

2.   Find out what makes them tick

Depending on what type of boss you are and how close you are with your employees, it can sometimes be hard to truly understand your employees’ motivations as well as the elements of their job that discourages them from succeeding. You may be able to overcome this by simply sitting down once a week and having an informal chat with your employees.

However, if you have a larger team, you may not have the time to do this or may not feel that your employees would be 100% honest with you. It can be helpful to utilise the services of an employee engagement specialist such as Inpulse employee surveys who can offer you real-time insights into your staff.

3.   Don’t micromanage

How can you expect your employees to feel motivated and inspired if you are constantly watching over them or telling them what to do? Letting your team simply get on with the job that you yourself hired them to do goes a long way in making your employees feel trusted and competent in their abilities.

Showing that you have faith in your staff is critical if you want them to be engaged in your business and be able to grow as employees. However, getting the right balance of autonomy can be tricky, as many managers worry about their employees taking advantage of the free rein. Ensure that you talk to your staff about your decision not to micromanage and how you are putting your trust in them to have the business’ best interests at heart.

4.   Invest in their working environment

Now you don’t have to go as far as Google Headquarters (but feel free to create this kind of set up if you want to), however, ensuring that your business’ working environment is conducive to productivity is important if you want your employees to stay motivated.

The average employee spends 37.4 hours at work every week, so creating a space that is both inspiring and as stress-free as possible is vital. Focus on offering lots of natural light and open plan layouts which encourage creativity and employee interaction.