Motivating Employees – Inexpensive Ways to Motivate Staff

For an organisation to grow, you need to hire staff to help you achieve your business goals and objectives. To ensure that your employees continue to carry out these necessary tasks, you will need to motivate your staff if you are to have them remain productive and consistently delivering better results. How to do so economically has often eluded many business owners. This article will take you through some effective and inexpensive ways of motivating your staff. From the beautiful gourmet mixed breads from our staff working lunches, the fillings are on a rotation throughout the week so there will always be fresh and updated seasonal filings to enjoy.

At the core of every person is the basic need to feel like they belong, are contributing and are growing as a person. Learning new skills and giving staff the ability and opportunity to overcome challenges are great ways to encourage people.

So to best motivate your employees you should appeal to their emotional, mental as well as their financial desires. It is important that you move beyond just financial reward especially in today’s economic environment of increasing competition and ever tightening profit margins. Since money is often not the only deciding factor for a candidate to accept a position, making some relatively small changes to the company can make you stand out from the crowd and become an employer of choice.

Your continued effort in focusing attention on these three areas will pay off as an investment in your business, and the good news is that it doesn’t need to be a huge expense.

Motivating employees to achieve business objectives need not be expensive. Listed below are a few options to motivate your staff without the emphasis being placed on financial rewards or incentives.

  • Recognition and praise

Whenever a team member meets their deadlines or targets, a small word of praise or a job well done from a senior staff member can have a significant effect on this person. A few words like “Good job!! Well Done!!!” go a long way. This does not cost you anything, but the team member feels proud of the achievement and is usually very grateful for the acknowledgement of their efforts.

Also, while praising a team member or recognising an achievement, do not just provide the praise or acknowledgement privately. Be sure to publicly announce larger achievements or milestones via a group or team meeting or by having a small celebration such as drinks, an afternoon tea or lunch.

Deep down everybody wants and likes to be recognised and praised, so the more you do this, the more your employees strive to receive this from you and others. This is fulfilling one of their basic human needs, hence why it is so powerful.

But, care needs to be taken that credit is given fairly and equally amongst team members when and where it is due, else it can lead to internal rivalry which will then result in having the opposite effect on your team.

  • Highly interactive, friendly and transparent environment and culture

It is very important that managers interact with all team members. Person-to-person interaction between management and staff can be either carried out through formal or informal meetings, company social events or business meetings. This can ensure that you can interact with all employees and take interest in both their professional and personal interests. You can strive to keep the culture and environment positive and interactive by embracing theme days, supporting charities, or celebrating sporting events. Encourage team based activities and setup committees to organise events to encourage and motivate people across all departments and levels of seniority in the business. A little bit of care goes a long way in keeping people engaged.

  • Training and skill enhancement

You may have been successful in recruiting highly skilled and capable employees, but as a business owner or manager you should not fall into the trap of thinking that your team are the ‘best’ and do not require or want the opportunity to learn or develop further.

Again it is in our makeup as humans to want to grow and develop, which is something, most of us will do all our lives.

Most employees like to feel that they are gaining something personally in return for the work that they are doing for an organization. This is usually called self-improvement or development. To engage an employee, managers can plan ongoing training for them. Training delivered can be in various forms such as technical or soft skills, and can be formal or informal. Providing on the job training is an inexpensive way of motivating an employee on the job training, mentoring by a senior staff member or involvement in new tasks or projects which may be easily incorporated in to the employee’s weekly or monthly activities.

  • Job rotation and enhancement

Jobs can get monotonous if the same work is to be done day in and day out. It is easy to see motivation levels decline when there is no challenge in the role or lack of variety in the tasks in entails. To overcome this, a manager may be able to offer job rotation. A front desk person may be able to be trained internally and asked to look after a filing system, a database, or the organisation of an event. This could be given on an ad-hoc basis or they could up skill and rotate across into a more administrative role for a number of hours or days per week. Monotony will then be broken as this person may be able to learn more in the process and become further engaged in other aspects of the company. Not only will this assist with ensuring your employee stays motivated but it also allows for further growth. Job skills sharing can also go a long way to retaining staff within your organisation for longer as they continue to grow, feel recognised and rewarded, and know that they are adding value.

These are just a few of the inexpensive ways to motivate your employees that any business owner or manager can utilise without having to always give financial rewards or bonuses.

If motivating and retaining your existing employees seems like a daunting task, it need not be! Please visit my Linkedin profile to learn more insider tips into successful recruitment practices. You’ll discover proven strategies to master your hiring process, building a team of motivated employees that will continue to support your business growth into the future.

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