How to Keep Employees Motivated and Productive Throughout the Year
After the holiday break, you may find that your employees may take some time to get their groove back. Add the fact that your staff needs to be consistently encouraged to be more efficient in their work throughout the year.
In this post, we will share with you practical tips how you can keep your employees motivated and productive as they work their way into 2015:
1. Personal connection matters.
Take time to listen to them and interact with them in a personal manner. Get to know the people behind the job titles and engage with them.
Tip: For your next performance evaluation, try to change venues like in laid-back restaurant. Say more than “Hi!” and strike a casual conversation to know more about them in a more personal level.
2. Inspire a healthier lifestyle.
A company who cares for their employees’ health sees less sick workers. Provide your employees with resources that will inspire them to live a healthier lifestyle.
Tip: Offer more nutritious food choices in your cafeteria, provide a gym where they can work out or do yoga, disseminate information how to live healthier, or challenge them to kick a bad habit like smoking and give them incentive for taking overcoming it.
3. Create a place to de-stress.
Stress is one of the reasons your employees drag themselves to work everyday. Let your workers relax and rest, especially when the work load is highly stressful. When their workplace allows them to de-stress, they are more excited to go to work and become more productive.
Tip: Have film showing once a week inside the office during a down time. Give them liberty to step out of the office when needed to release their stress. Have a small quiet room where your employees may go in and rest their minds for a while.
4. Let them be creative.
Give your employees autonomy to be creative in their work. Allow them to discover methods and resolutions at their pace and with their own style. You will be surprised how much work your team will deliver just because you let them be creative.
Tip: On your next company evaluation, review your current work flow and let your employees suggest ways to improve it; Or encourage them to come up with innovative and creative methods that will make their jobs easier.
5. Praise with positive reinforcement and offer constructive assessment.
Employees feel their worth when they are praised for a job well done or showed exemplary character at work, especially when this verbal compliment is also combined with rewards or incentives that your employees will appreciate. Even when they commit a job error or fall short of meeting their expected targets, protect your employees’ morale by giving constructive criticism than scolding.
Tip: When correcting an employee, try to use the “sandwich approach”—where you start with their good points first, then followed by the area where he needs to improve, and ending with an encouragement for them to do their action plans.
Bottom line is that showing mutual respect and appreciation to your employees and empowering them to will keep them motivated and productive for the rest of the year.
