Everyone faces a dip in motivation
now and then, and consistently maintaining high levels motivation in the
workplace can be challenging. That's why we gathered some great tips from
experts to help you keep yourself and your team motivated, day in and day out.
These tips aren't specific to any
industry, and most of them are either low, or no-cost. They can be applied in a
small, local establishment, a franchise, an early-stage startup, or a Fortune
500 company.
Let's get started with one that has
the potential to change everything: recognition.
1.
Recognize great work.
One of the most important factors in
employee motivation is how often their hard work is recognized.
If an employee continues to expend
discretionary effort to produce exceptional results, and that effort isn't
recognized, don't expect it to keep happening.
It's not just important to recognize
great work -- how you go about recognizing your team's contributions has
a significant impact. An annual bonus at the end of the year isn't likely to do
the trick.
Meghan M. Biro shared some excellent
advice on how to make the recognition you give more effective in a
recent TalentCulture post. Here's one of my favorite tips she mentioned:
Money is appropriate much of the
time, but it’s not the only – or even the most effective – motivator. Treat
employees as valued team members, not as numbers.
2.
Set small, measurable goals.
It can be incredibly demoralizing to work on a project that seems like it will
never end. Visible progress not only feels good, it's also a clear indicator
that our work is making a difference.
We met with Walter Chen, co-founder
of iDoneThis, who shared some great insights into the importance of clear goal
setting and tracking progress. You can check out the interview here.
Setting clear, achievable goals
provides a real boost of motivation each time one is conquered. You can magnify
that effect by taking the next step, and celebrating those achievements.
3.
Applaud results.
Part of what makes setting small and measurable goals so important is that it
provides plenty of opportunities to applaud the results of your team's hard
work.
This doesn't mean you need to give a
standing ovation to every employee who made it to work on time, but it is
crucial to let everyone know exactly how (and how much) much each of their
contributions move the organization forward.
Be specific in your applause. Don't
just tell Marie 'Good job.' Don't even stop at 'Great job on that hotfix you
deployed.' Applaud her success, and when you do, tie them to the greater
picture. For example: 'Great job on that hotfix you added -- it's dramatically
reduced the number of website errors, and that makes a huge difference in how
customers experience our service.'
4.
Stay Positive.
Nobody likes having a conversation about how poorly they've done. It's true
that expecting nothing but rainbows and sunshine all day every day is a bit
unrealistic, but even those of us with 'thick skin' have a tolerance threshold
for negativity.
The good news is that it's just as
easy, perhaps even easier to provide direction via positive reinforcement.
Instead of telling a teammate where they went wrong, focus on the things they
did right.
It turns out that happiness and
positivity play a greater role in the success of your business than you'd ever
imagine. If you're not fully convinced yet, take a moment to view this
hilarious, yet fascinating presentation by psychologist Shawn Achor, explaining
why:
A simple shift in bias toward
positivity and happiness can have an immediate impact on your work experience
and relationships, which are a major factor in success, motivation, and
engagement.
5.
Stay fueled
It's hard to stay focused and driven
when you're low on fuel. That's why it's so important for everyone to stay fed.
Unfortunately, it's common for employees to become so busy engrossed in their
work that they either forget or forego breakfast, and even lunch. That's not
great for their health, and even worse for their productivity.
Buffer's co-founder Leo Widrich
wrote an outstanding and very detailed article
on food's crucial role in employee wellbeing, and even productivity.
So how do you solve this one?
Keeping healthy snacks around the
workplace is an easy way to help your team maintain energy levels throughout
the day. The cost of providing them will likely be offset by the your team's
increased productivity.
If you don't have the time or
resources to manage this on your own, there are some great services out there
that can help you keep your office stocked with healthy snacks. Our friends at SnackNation
will even drop a curated box of healthy snacks right at your company's front
door.
6.
Take regular breaks.
You can't expect to maintain workplace motivation when everyone's burned out --
that's why it's so important to take regular breaks. Stepping back and taking a
moment to refresh and recalibrate isn't just helpful in staying motivated, it's
also important to your health.
Sitting all day isn't good for you,
and neither is working nonstop. Taking even a 5 minute break every hour or two
can have a positive effect on both your mind and body.
Courtney Seiter wrote an outstanding
article on the Buffer blog, detailing scientific
evidence behind the importance of taking breaks. In the article, she explains:
When you’re really in the groove of
a task or project, the ideas are flowing and you feel great. But it doesn’t
last forever—stretch yourself just a bit beyond that productivity zone and you
might feel unfocused, zoned out or even irritable.
Taking breaks are crucial to
avoiding that effect, and Courtney offered some great examples of how to fit
these all-important elements into our workday.
7.
Stay healthy.
Which brings us to our next topic: Staying healthy. As we learned in our interview with Button's Stephen
Milbank, Nothing is worse than when an employee forces themselves to
come into work when they're sick, and gets everyone else sick.
It's highly unlikely that you'll be
getting any of your best work done when you can hardly hold your head up
anyway.
Make sure that the policies you're
instituting aren't keeping people from taking the time they need to stay
healthy. Think about the way you approach time off and medical benefits.
Disengagement and lack of motivation cost companies across the world billions
of dollars each year.
A generous time off policy might
seem expensive at face value, but actually save your company a lot of money in
lost productivity, poor attendance, and engagement.
8.
See and share the big picture.
A large part of understanding the
purpose behind your work is seeing how it fits into the larger picture, and you
can help boost motivation in the workplace by ensuring your team understands
how each of their efforts impacts the larger goals of your organization.
Completing one task provides a sense
of accomplishment that generally boosts motivation, but seeing how that work
helped the company grow can multiply the effect.
9.
Be transparent
Every relationship, including any
work relationship, is built on trust. Defaulting to transparency is one of the
best ways to encourage an atmosphere of trust amongst you and your team, and a
team that trusts you will be more motivated.
Trust isn't the only benefit of
transparency though. It also helps ensure that everyone is working with the
same information. That in itself can benefit the team. In a piece she wrote recently,
HR expert Susan Heathfield explained why it's important that you
"communicate responsibly and effectively any information employees need to
perform their jobs most effectively."
10.
Provide clarity
It's crucial to understand the goals you're after in order to be motivated to
achieve them. For many employees, that understanding starts with transparency,
and ends with clarity. Without clarity, transparency begins to lose its
effectiveness and motivational power.
Make sure you're giving everyone a
very clear and concise mission they can get motivated about in the first place,
because it's nearly impossible to invest genuine motivation into something
you're unaware of, or confused about.
11.
Envision and share positive outcomes.
It's easier to achieve success when
you can envision it. Professionals of all types, from athletes to musicians and
CEOs all practice this technique to improve their motivation.
Luckily, if you're providing a clear
objective, you're already more than halfway there.
Help the team understand what it
would mean to achieve that objective. When someone makes real progress toward
that objective or outcome, share that progress as a source of motivation for
everyone.
12.
Find purpose
Although it's commonly stated that millennial employees are motivated by
purposeful work, it's really true of nearly all employees. We met with
Imperative's Arthur Woods, who explained why purpose is a vital factor in employee
motivation, and how to help share and express that purpose.
Erica Dhawan echoed Arthur's advice
in an article about motivation that she
wrote for The Muse. She explains why it's so important to take time
to explain the purpose behind the work you do:
Another key to staying motivated is
knowing that the work you’re doing makes a difference in some way—recognizing
the impact you’re making on your clients, company, or the world.
13.
Loosen the reins
Autonomy is an incredibly effective
motivator. Giving employees the ability to choose when and how they get their
work done can actually improve their efficiency, and help keep them motivated.
In her article for Monster.com, Roberta Chinsky Matuson provides a
great framework for getting started on the path of employee autonomy:
Tell your employees what needs to be
done by what deadline; allow them to decide when they will do the actual work.
For some, that may mean coming in early; for others that might involve working
on the weekend.
The key here is that you're giving
employees the freedom to work on their project when their motivation is
strongest, not just when they're in the workplace.
Giving employees more control over
their work also helps eliminate one of the worst enemies of motivation in the
workplace -- micromanagement.
14.
Provide a sense of security.
I'm not talking about adding CCTV
cameras to the common area. I'm talking about a sense of personal security
employees value, like security that next week, they'll still have a place to
work.
Psychological theory suggests that
there is a hierarchy of basic needs that people require before they can be
motivated to reach their full potential. Security falls right beneath
physiological needs like food and water.
Once employees feel secure, they're
more likely to be motivated to reach, and further stretch their potential.
15.
Power pose.
Your posture not only says a lot
about your motivation levels, it can actually impact them. Amy Cuddy gave an
outstanding TED presentation about what your own body language can tell you,
and how it affects your mood, your work, and your interactions with others.
Take a moment to think about your
own posture, and the postures you're seeing around the workplace. What are they
saying? If what they're saying isn't positive, try experimenting with different
postures, and see how they impact your overall motivation.
16.
Encourage teamwork.
Teamwork is one of the greatest motivators out there. Pulling together, seeing
everyone's hard work and yours coming together is an amazing feeling. When your
motivation is flagging, your teammate is right there to help carry you past
that point into your next piece of great work.
In their 2014 Employee Engagement and
Organizational Culture Report, the TINYpulse team found that peers
are the #1 factor in employees choosing to go the extra mile.
Think about how you're structuring
your work environment: does it encourage teamwork, or does it limit
interactions amongst employees? If you're not giving employees an opportunity
to work cohesively, you're missing out on a huge opportunity.
There are many ways you can improve
peer relationships -- one of which is peer-to-peer recognition and rewards.
17.
Small, consistent rewards.
Rewarding employees for their hard work is a motivational rule that nearly goes
without saying; however, there are several ways to go about doing that, and
some are more effective than others.
Annual bonuses are a common way many
employers reward their employees for their hard work. Unfortunately, they don't
often provide the motivation they're designed to. An annual bonus perceived as
disappointing or unfair can even damage motivation in the workplace.
Providing smaller, more consistent
rewards is a great way to boost motivation consistently over time.
Sometimes a small shift of scenery
can provide a big shift in motivation. If it's possible, think about how the
environment you and your team work in impacts motivation. If there aren't many
sources of natural light coming in, it might be valuable to step outside
together from time to time.
Spending even a few moments in
different surroundings can provide a new perspective, and often a noticeable
boost in motivation.
19.
Practice and promote mindfulness.
Taking time out of your day to slow down and practice mindfulness might sound
like it would negatively impact productivity, but in many cases, the opposite
is true.
Many of us work in jobs where stress
is a matter of course, but as the Harvard Business Review staff explains in
their article Mindfulness in the Age of Complexity,
"...stress is not a function of events; it’s a function of the view you
take of events."
Embracing mindfulness at work can
improve productivity and motivation by providing the perspective we need to see
that.
20.
Have fun.
Not every task at work is going to
feel like a day at Six Flags. That's OK. What's not OK is having a team that
feels like every day is a slog. You don't need a ping-pong table or a kegerator
in your office to make work fun. Find little bits of fun in everyday
activities, and focus on what it is that makes working in your organization
great.
You and your team will be amazed at
how motivating a little bit of fun can be.
You can get started on improving
motivation in your workplace with any of these suggestions, and develop your
own as well. We're excited to hear about your ideas in the comments.
