Maintaining staff motivation is important to your company’s success.
We've talked about how to motivate your team, but as a good leader you need to be able to identify the factors that cause a lack of motivation in the workplace.
A drop in motivation can become contagious if the cause isn't identified and addressed. If you become familiar with the factors that degrade staff motivation, you can design plans to combat it.
Business Insider contributor Vivian Giang provides four signs to look for when employees are losing motivation.
There are a number of things you can do as a leader once you recognize the signs.
Giang suggests managers do the following:
In addition Giang’s list, here are three more tips we came up with after listening to her interview with LocalJobNetwork.com’s host Tim Muma.
Diagnose the problem and deal with it immediately. Problems that don’t get addressed kill team morale quickly. Not only are they distracting, but they negatively affect employee motivation and enthusiasm. “These problems need to be dealt with immediately before they grow into bigger, more complicated issues,” says Giang.
Lead. Employees are motivated by strong direction from management balanced with the chance to work on their own. Provide direction when needed, listen to employees’ needs, and don’t be afraid to help out when things get tough.
Incorporate fun. Try to add some fun things to improve team morale, raise energy levels, reduce stress, spark creativity, and increase social interactions. Something as simple as holiday decorations or lunchtime games such as wiffle ball or bocce do a lot to raise engagement levels and boost motivation.
Besides having a great product or service, most businesses success is connected to motivated employees.
Look for and recognize the signs your employees are losing their motivation and whatever methods you come up to re-motivate them will result in excited, loyal, and productive employees.
Can you do more to keep employees engaged and productive?
As business owners survey their organizations, they’ll likely notice their productive people – those employees expert at accomplishing lengthy task lists without breaking a sweat.
In a Inc.com post, contributor Kevin Daum shares six tips for being more productive each day, based on his observations into the lives of extremely productive people.
It doesn’t matter whether the goal is achieving a certain level of financial success or making a commitment to get healthier, lasting productivity centers on making conscious decisions about what demands your attention and what can wait.
“With most endeavors, you can either go deep or go wide. Focus on spending time that for you is fun and productive.”
Choosing and understanding the priorities most important to you will determine how you spend your time most effectively.
Daum notes no one can do everything well, and advises business leaders to design their personal and professional lives to meet their wants, while recognizing that saying no is often a good thing. “Live your life by design, not by default.”
For business leaders, efficiency can be avoiding the distractions that don’t advance their business goals or delegating whenever possible.
There are countless blog posts written about the pursuit of work-life balance, but Daum takes a different approach.
“Stop trying to balance time between friends, family, work and play. Find ways to enjoy them in a combined manner.” Rather than balance, blend and integrate activities and passions.
Social media, conversations around the water cooler, and interpersonal relationships can monopolize your time and drain your productivity if you let them. Treat your daily work day like a budget, and allocate resources accordingly.
Keep interactions and conversations that don’t support your business goals to a minimum and you’ll accomplish more every day.
The most productive people always seek out opportunities to learn new skills, especially if it helps them work more efficiently by freeing up their hands for larger priorities.
“Always be looking for a new way to gain back an hour here or there,” says Daum.
By actively looking for ways to improve on current practices and ways of working, you’ll pick up little tips and tricks to help you work smarter, not harder.
Prioritizing activities and managing time-wasters can help, but sometimes a few things will remain on your to-do list from the day or week before.
That’s perfectly acceptable, says Daum.
The important thing to remember about productivity is it’s about developing new, healthy habits, and constantly reinforcing them.
What productivity tips do you have?
