20.06.2023

3 WAYS TO ENCOURAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES

For a company to be successful, its employees must be productive, engaged and creative. It directly depends on their motivation. It is crucial for any company to encourage its employees so that they give their best.

What most affects employee motivation?

Employees like to be incentivized and rewarded when they achieve results. Financial benefits have a significant impact on their work morale, and development opportunities keep them engaged. Factors such as work-leisure balance, a positive work environment and flexible working hours also play a role in maintaining high motivation. In the next few lines, we will look at three main ways to encourage company employees to be more motivated.

Choose the right social benefits and bonuses

When your employees achieve high results, praise alone is not enough. Choose the right benefits and bonuses to reward high performers. Social benefits should be part of your arsenal even for those employees who achieve the set goals and work with commitment and dedication.

Choosing social benefits and bonuses that will appeal to each individual employee is not easy. Therefore, there are universal tools such as food vouchers, bonus schemes, supplementary health insurance, corporate discounts. They give each employee the opportunity to choose how to spend the honestly earned amount according to his taste and preference.

Organize fun events

If you want to raise the level of emotions among the team, then you can build on the financial incentives and organize a company party, team-building or a more modest event in the office, where employees can relax and have fun together. Whether you will rent a karaoke bar where everyone can show off their singing skills, whether you will organize a nice weekend away from the office or just have an evening cocktail-making competition in one of the company's meeting rooms, it doesn't really matter. The important thing is to do it often enough and make sure everyone participates.

Give feedback

Something that won't cost any money, but the effect is undeniable, is providing feedback. Very often, employees leave a company because they did not understand in time whether and how much they are valued by the employer, and especially by their direct supervisor. Create a company culture where feedback is important. Don't let managers wait for the annual appraisal to give feedback to team members. Uncertainty about how an employee is performing causes him or her to look for a new job just in case. In addition, through timely and correct feedback, some minor shortcomings in the employee's work can be prevented. It's not an easy job, but if you succeed, there's a chance you can significantly reduce the number of people who leave voluntarily, and also increase the efficiency and productivity of employees.

What are the mistakes you should not make?

Perhaps the most effective way to realize for yourself the mistakes you make when managing a team and trying to keep the motivation level high is by putting yourself in the shoes of your employees. However, this is by no means an easy task. Therefore, we have prepared some common mistakes that you should avoid.

1. You don't reward those who deserve it - even if you don't reward all of your employees, you should at least reward those who deserve it. There is a chance that you will lose both them and those who observe your behavior from the sidelines.
2. You select inappropriate social benefits and gifts for employees. Imagine that you did make an effort to reward high-performing employees, but what you gave them didn't reflect their needs and interests in any way. That means you've wasted your money, and the end result is even worse than not having given it anything at all. It shows that you don't know them, or at the very least, don't care about their life outside of the workplace.
3. You keep a too restrictive and strict environment - the lack of opportunities to talk about non-work topics, little free time and systemic restrictions in the workplace can demotivate even the most hardworking and dedicated employees. It is a mistake to think that high discipline in the workplace leads to high results. Many employees come to work with pleasure precisely because of the opportunity to talk with colleagues during the coffee break or lunch.

The list is long, but back to the original advice – when you get to the stage of deciding on motivators and the work environment, put yourself in your employees' shoes and think about how this will affect their motivation or engagement. This way you will almost always manage to avoid mistakes.