How to Motivate Your Employees And Improve Their Performance

Every employee needs motivation and it’s what drives their behavior. It highly affects the amount of time and effort someone puts into something and when they are demotivated, it can lead to higher levels of disengagement. 

Only 36% of American workers are happy at the workplace and a big factor that influences disengagement is the lack of motivation to work. Therefore, it’s highly important for the organization to take the necessary approaches for making employees be at their peak performance level. 

In this article, we will be talking more on what you can do to help your employees perform at their peak. 

The importance of keeping your staff motivated 

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Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve learned many things and that is to know the importance of keeping your staff motivated at all times. Some of these  important lessons are: 

• Safety should be your priority: Your staff’s safety should be considered a priority. They’ll highly value the fact that you care about their health and that if anything happens, you'll do whatever it takes to help them.

• Encourage group communications: Communication is important, especially when an individual is undergoing changes in their life. When you communicate with them, they’ll know that you care and put their trust in the company. Nevertheless, employees will also feel more secure to openly communicate with you and their team. Group communications also allow employees to trust one another more. 

• Conduct one-on-one meetings: Your employees might be going through hard times and you might not know, so it’s important to closely listen to them and see what kind of flexibility you can provide for helping them. 

There’s more to it than just that. These are only some basic principles, but we’ll be learning more about how you can apply these other lessons to your business for motivating your employees. 

8 Practices to follow for motivating your employees 

The whole idea here is about making them feel special and valued when they are facing challenges. Here are some practices you can follow for encouraging your employees to stay at their best. 

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Traveling is one of the best ways to release stress from your mind. To make traveling more effective, you can consider hiring a corporate travel agency like TravelPerk. Travel agencies negotiate special rates for each individual client, especially when it’s a special trip like corporate traveling. 

Moreover, travel agencies will usually partner up with vendors, so every time your team hops on the plane, they’ll be traveling at a much cheaper fee. 

Always aim to make your experience fun and not entirely for business purposes. It doesn’t matter if you are professionals, you can still have fun together even out of the office. 

You can start a personal development program and make motivational videos. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t a motivational speaker, this is called supporting your team. You can always create motivational videos and use online audio transcription for allowing your employees to watch videos without sound. 

Maybe they are at the office and don’t want to disturb their colleagues, so reading the captions is always a great way to interpret what information they receive from the video. Depending on which transcription tool you use, you can convert audio to text in more than 100 languages and more than 40 formats. 

When you want to convert your audio to text, you should follow these steps: 

• Share your URL: Use your uploader to import your file from Google Drive, Youtube, Dropbox, or whatever you are using. 

• Choose the language you want to use: Each country speaks a different language, so follow what language you are working in. 

• Encourage proofreading: Depending on whether you automatically or manually transcribe your audio, you need to initially proofread. Manually transcribing your audio will have higher accuracy rates. 

More than 90% of individuals will watch videos without sound, so transcribing audio to text for your team is an excellent way to allow them to still watch your motivational videos. 

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People will always want to stay at your company if they have a good reason to do so. If you want this to happen, you need to start working on an incentive program. Here are a few rewards you need to pay close attention to: 

• Quarterly bonuses 

• Private healthcare 

• Profit-sharing 

• Offering to pay for qualifications and additional credentials 

If everyone is aware of the rewards they’ll receive because they got the job done, they’ll more likely be able to do a good job and be motivated for what’s coming in the future. A firm that offers rewards will always be one step ahead of the rest. 

Teamwork is the key to improving employee motivation. Working together with your team makes sure that everyone feels valued and plays an important part in trying to achieve the same goal. Also, it means that you can share ideas and solve problems together with your colleagues. 

39% of worldwide workers are reported to not collaborate enough at the workplace. This might spread negative energy and demotivate employees. Remember, it only takes one person to ruin a team and you want to avoid this happening at all costs. 

Encourage brainstorming sessions during meet ups and allow each team member to share ideas with each other. 

It’s easy to say good job or well done. These simple words can go a long way and matter a lot when it comes to showing appreciation. Another way for recognizing good work is to offer a small reward, like extra vacation days, a voucher or even a chance to travel. 

This gives employees a better reason to work for and is an excellent way to show appreciation towards them. After all, nearly 84% of employees feel that recognition affects their motivation level and helps them better succeed at work. 

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Flexible working schedules are great ways to show that you are a company who promotes flexibility and ensures that everyone is working during their highest productivity times. Each individual is different and productive during different times of the day. 

Especially if you are working remotely, it’s important to encourage flexible working schedules. Someone might be at their peak performance levels during midnight and others during the early hours in the morning. 

The freedom to choose when you can work during is much better for many than following a fixed working schedule. Why so? The reason is because not every single employee might prefer to follow a fixed schedule. 

Flexible working schedules can improve work-life balance, reduce employee burnout and allow your team to focus more on their work when they are at peak productivity levels. 

Learning and development offers are an excellent way to give a sense of belonging to employees. These opportunities are great for recieving rewards, a job promotion or even increased compensation. 

Learning opportunities may be something like strengthening your working skills, or learning a new skill. This may even be a better chance for newbies and those who don’t have any experience. 

Each employee will have a different reason to be motivated. It’s your job to find out what it is. 

Is it learning a new skill? Owning a business? Becoming a manager? Or what could it be? Sit down with your employees individually and try to find out more on what they are pursuing in their life. 

Managers are a valuable resource for helping their team understand what their motivators are. From that moment, managers can build great experiences for elevating the team's value. 

If you are working remotely, you can always make one on one video calls to learn more about what drives each individual on your team. You don't always have to meet in-person to know. 

An unmotivated employee can kill the organization's goals faster than you think 

The last thing you want to happen in your organization is to have a group full of unmotivated employees. As we said before, each employee will be driven by different factors and it’s your responsibility to learn more about them. 

One good word might entirely change your team's day, so don’t be afraid to say it. If someone is going through hard times, changes in their life, try to sit down and find out how you can help them. 

After all, it’s important to make sure you are bringing your team members closer to their personal and professional goals. 

Once you help them get closer to their goals, they’ll do the same for the organization. 

The Author: 

Tony Ademi is a freelance SEO content and copywriter. For roughly four years, Tony has managed to write more than 500 SEO-optimized articles and most of them have ranked #1 on Google. When writing, Tony’s main focus is to carefully do research and make sure that his content is high-quality.