The fact that we lose motivation from time to time is not unusual. In moments like these, you, as a leader, must know how to increase not only your motivation but also learn to efficiently boost the motivation of your employees.
Motivation is what drives us, humans, to achieve our goals. The internal factors include things such as an individual's values, and willingness to develop, while external factors can be rewards, higher pay, or other similar factors. For a leader, motivation is about connecting to these factors and finding the combination of driving forces that motivate each employee. To truly motivate and build trust with your employees, you need to understand that it is a complicated process. But what motivates employees and what do you do to inspire employees? Below, we go through some tips on how you can take your employees from happy to inspired and motivated at work.
Create Trust
The first step to succeeding in motivating employees is to build trust. As a leader, you gain the trust of your employees when they feel that you are authentic, have good judgment, are competent, and even empathetic. They need to feel that you are showing your true self in the relationship with them (authenticity), that you are making informed decisions (judgment and competence), and that you genuinely care about them (empathy).
Employee Monitoring
You might not always be aware of whether your employees are engaged and motivated. However, by implementing productivity monitoring software in the workplace, you might grow to understand how to improve your employees’ working styles to increase motivation and productivity. Employee productivity tracking is key to the overall success of an organization and tracking your employees may bring numerous advantages that can be implemented to improve the company’s work culture.
Investing in software for employee monitoring can help you track attendance, identify unproductive employees, and determine which apps, websites, and software your staff spend the most time on. This information is presented in the form of actionable insights, allowing you to not only increase productivity but also calculate wages, streamline work processes, evaluate your employees' needs, and improve every aspect of your business.
Encourage Skills Development
Allowing employees to continue their education in their particular field is a success factor for both the individual and the company. Encourage them to come up with suggestions in the areas where they believe there is room for improvement. If they are confident in their field-specific expertise, it will also result in greater responsibilities. In addition, be involved and support your employees in their careers and help them see what development opportunities they have in the company. Then they are more likely to be motivated to stay with the company and continue working for you.
Encourage Collaboration
To motivate your workers, try to establish a collaborative work environment. This is one of the best facilitators for growth. When everyone shares the same office space, collaboration occurs naturally but if you have a remote team, it can be a lot harder to get people to work together. They might not even work regular hours which makes sharing ideas and information an additional challenge. However, nowadays there are simple yet effective methods for encouraging collaboration and motivating teams. For example, you can set up an accountability buddy system where remote employees can get paired with one another and hold each other accountable to perform tasks and achieve progress in their goals. Being able to reach out to someone for advice and questions is a great way to get motivated, strengthen bonds, and create a safe working environment.
Give Feedback and Praise
Your employees will be more open to receiving feedback if you have established a trustworthy relationship with them as well as explained why something should be done. The most effective technique to deliver constructive criticism to an employee is by providing specific feedback. For the employee to be maximally efficient, you should explain what they should do more or less. For example, give feedback on how the employee's behavior affects others. Simply saying that the employee communicates clearly and well is nice for the employee to hear but you’ll take things a step further and boost motivation levels if your feedback also explains how other employees have an easier time understanding and performing their tasks as a result of their clear communication skills. Praise helps most individuals develop and feel better about themselves, so you should make the most of any opportunity you get to praise your employees. Make sure to recognize not only the big project that was carried out from start to finish but also the smaller tasks such as when someone takes an initiative that is in the company's best interest.
Final Words
Motivation does not come in a single form. As a leader, the best thing you can do is listen, respond to your employees' needs, and be fair and realistic. Be open with your expectations, encourage skills development and collaboration and always give valuable feedback, and dare to challenge your employees.
