10 Tips on How to Motivate Employees and Grow Together with Them

Knowing how to motivate employees is an invaluable tool in your arsenal. Employees who are enthusiastic about their jobs are more likely to be productive and creative with their roles. Employee motivation strategies can be very comprehensive, but they don’t have to be complicated. 

Employees have one obvious reason to keep working—to earn a living for themselves and their families. While this isn’t their only criterion to keep coming to work every day, it is most certainly the most motivating factor. While offering more money is a straightforward way to motivate employees, it isn’t always feasible, nor is it effective in the long run. 

Employees also seek different elements from their organization such as career progression and satisfaction at a job well done, and employers need to be able to cater to these other priorities to keep employees engaged. 

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Shuffling Through 10 Useful Tips on How to Motivate Employees

Employee motivation strategies have the potential to be quite diverse, but most organizations prefer to stick to a handful of tried and tested methods that involve minimal effort to set up. There are many ways to motivate employees and they all require different levels of planning and a varying number of resources to organize. 

Even without special benefits, employees are likely to join an organization and work to the best of their abilities, however, enthusiasm for such unfulfilling work is likely to run out quickly. When a more appealing job opportunity comes their way, under-compensated and undermotivated employees will be quick to jump ship and move on to a different role. 

Sure, you can rehire for the position quickly, but you’ll have to waste quite a bit of time and energy on rehiring, onboarding, and training the employee. This new hire will also move on within a few months and you’ll be forced to repeat the process all over again. Multiply this into the number of employees at your organization, and you’ll have a constant cycle of hiring and firing on your hands.

Determining how to motivate employees is a key step in planning any business and these strategies don’t have to be expensive. For a small business, it can be nearly impossible to offer everyone the same kind of benefit that a top-tier company provides to its workers, but that does not have to mean that there are zero effective ways to motivate their employees. Let’s dive into some tips for building employee motivation. 

1. Create a Sense of Community for the Employee

Monetary compensation and other benefits are very useful in both attracting top talent to an organization as well as retaining them and are thus a worthwhile investment for any business. However, employees can also be motivated to work with a team they enjoy being around. Create opportunities for employees to work with each other through employee resource groups, team-building activities, book clubs, company think tanks, sports teams, etc. 

Encourage employees to interact with each other and help them connect over interests that unite them. You’ll find your employees to be much happier and more likely to enjoy their work.

2. Appreciate Achievements and Share them with the Team

One of the easiest ways to motivate employees is to appreciate the work they do. Acknowledge achievements even if they are an expected part of the employee’s role, for example, completing a project on time or addressing a client’s requirements perfectly. 

These words of appreciation should not be hollow or generic—employees can tell when your encouragement is just a routine tick against a task list. Understand the work employees are doing and credit them for their specific contributions. Sharing these achievements with the rest of the team can encourage further support to be directed their way, which can be extremely motivating and uplifting. 

3. Help Employees Find Their Niche or Build Their Area of Expertise

One of the best tips for building employee motivation is to work with their interests instead of against them. It can be tempting to assign work mechanically and force employees to excel at all types of projects, but this can become burdensome over time. Most employee motivation strategies will tell you that they are more likely to feel motivated to work on tasks they enjoy or care about.

It isn’t possible to allow them to just skip the task they don’t like because it’s part of their responsibility, but try to work with them to get a larger share of the kind of tasks they enjoy or excel at. This way, employees can find their area of interest and contribute their insights to the organization, helping young teams grow. Show employees that you are on their side.

4. Help Employees Chart their Career Plans and Future Areas of Growth

Improving employee motivation is considerably easier when employees have something to work toward. Work with employees to chart out how they can expect to grow at the organization and what internal promotions they can hope to see. When they are able to see their future laid out in front of them, employees will be encouraged to keep working on their career goals with the organization instead of looking for other opportunities. 

5. Provide Employees with Training and Educational Assistance

Employees are required to keep up with the constant changes in their industry and improve their skills regularly. This can be much easier to accomplish when employees are supported by their employer. Providing industry-specific training or assisting employees with seeking that education outside is a very novel way to motivate employees. 

Many organizations have education assistance programs that help them retain their workers while also helping workers improve their skills and give back to the workforce. 

6. Improving Employee Motivation by Focusing on Work-Life Balance

Employees spend the majority of their day at their place of work or consumed by their work at home if they enjoy a hybrid opportunity. This can become exhausting in the long run and cause employees to lose interest. A good tip for improving employee motivation is to help them separate their work life from their personal life.

Assist employees with leaving work on time, using their paid time off, and focusing on their vacation when they are away. Create a work culture that respects an employee’s personal life.

7. Invest in Employee Creativity and Encourage Them to Take Initiative

Employees who are expected to work mechanically with no say in their work are bound to complete their tasks dispassionately, with no desire to think too hard about their role. Create opportunities where employees can put their ideas and suggestions forward and allow the team to explore its feasibility. 

Even if ideas are impractical or difficult to attempt in the present, do not discourage employees from thinking about their role in novel ways. When possible, try to implement some of their suggestions and give them a chance to lead once in a while. Not only will this encourage employees to think about their tasks more deeply, but they will also be more motivated to perform them. 

8. Explore What Fringe Benefits the Organization Can Offer Its Employees

Employee benefits do not have to involve competitive wages every time. Although high wages are a good motivator, employees also appreciate health and wellness benefits, employee discounts, daycare assistance for their children, employee stocks, travel support to and from work, etc. Employers can get creative by understanding the makeup of their workforce and its needs and providing benefits that cater to them specifically. 

9. Create a Work Culture That’s Positive and Welcoming

Even in fast-paced industries that require things to keep moving forward without a break, there is room to create a healthy work culture that does not run on aggression. A positive workspace that celebrates individuality and stands up to toxic workplace behavior allows employees to be themselves and do their best. 

Creating an accepting and inclusive work culture can be a great way to motivate employees to do their best and stay with the organization long-term.

10. Involve Employees in Business Decisions

Employees can feel very disconnected from their organization when they aren’t aware of where the overall business is headed. If employees are constantly reminded to keep their heads down and focus on their work, they are unlikely to care about anything that doesn’t specifically affect their jobs. 

While exploring employee motivation strategies, keep employees in the loop about major changes occurring at the organization and gather their feedback on some of the changes when possible. The more that employees feel a connection with the organization, the more they care about its well-being and future.

Organizations that treat their employees as active parts of the team rather than passive, disposable resources will find their employees more motivated to participate in the company. If you’re serious about improving employee motivation, consider asking the employees what they need to feel like they belong to the organization and implement some of their suggestions in securing the future of the organization and its people. 

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