Enrique has a talented team at work. The people he manages are highly skilled, bring a breadth of experience to their jobs, and have diverse perspectives to offer. Happily, everyone gets along, too. Yet, lately, his dream team has struggled with motivation. They know what to do and how to do it, but their enthusiasm is gone.
Enrique needs to make some changes. You may be looking to do the same. This article shares several strategies for how to motivate your team at work.
The value of workplace motivation strategies
Managers like Enrique and other human resources professionals can easily see the value of knowing how to motivate people at work. A motivated workforce typically has improved performance, more engaged employees, greater retention rates, and a stronger company culture. Even a fellow team member can employ motivation strategies to see their peers working harder and raising the prospects of that entire group.
We often think motivation needs to come from within. That’s why this series began with a discussion of how to self-motivate at work. We also discussed in another article the challenges that can derail motivation. Nevertheless, by knowing how to motivate others, you can support stronger employee experience, with its many corollary benefits.
1. Build strong company culture
Yep, we just said that a motivated workforce supports a stronger culture, so telling you to focus on developing a positive company culture may sound a little like a chicken-egg scenario. Still, focusing on creating an environment where your people feel respected and heard benefits motivation.
Individuals also want to trust that their organization has their interests in mind (and, increasingly, cares about the community and society, too). Take M&T Bank. They created a program that gives employees 40 hours of paid time off to volunteer for a cause that they care about. This showed care about both the individual and community, while supporting the company’s overall mission of making a difference in people’s lives.
2. Individualize your approach
Yes, you need to think about the business as a whole. But, when it comes to motivating a specific individual, taking a personalized approach is more likely to have a positive impact. Improved compensation might speak to one person while gaining greater responsibility might motivate another. “The trick is understanding what is the most important thing for each person,” Becky Seefeldt of Benefit Resource, LLC, told Forbes.
Of course, it bears noting that all employee engagement techniques must balance organizational needs and individual preferences and styles. The more you know about your team, the more effectively you will be able to engage and motivate them.
3. Communicate effectively
It can be difficult to motivate when expectations are unclear or people don’t know the context for why they need to do a certain task or why a process had to change. When you want to motivate a team at work, make sure you first take the time to effectively communicate the full plan and its goals.
You don’t need to overwhelm everyone with details. Still, you want to help your people understand what you expect of them and the value of that work. It’s best if you can connect the work to opportunities for individual improvement and growth in addition to talking about meting overall business objectives.
4. Appeal to agency
Workers today want to shape the agenda, for their careers and for the organization at large. Giving individuals meaningful choices and influence over what they do and how they do it is powerful. In Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends survey, 84% of business leaders surveyed deemed worker agency “important or very important to their organization.”
But, how do you truly harness worker agency? Deloitte suggests cultivating a “creator’s mindset.” Instead of simply asking individuals to adapt to change, involve them in actively shaping new practices and developing new processes. This can mean:
- Soliciting workforce contributions into decision-making
- Encouraging continuous dialogue around shared outcomes
- Finding ways to meaningfully integrate workers’ perspectives
- Shifting from a manager-approved culture to a manager-informed approach
5. Show appreciation
Rewarding effort, even if it doesn’t lead to the intended result, can support employee motivation. Of course, you don’t want to recognize time wasting or a completely misguided approach to a task. Yet by focusing your positive feedback on the steps taken or the collaboration along the way, you can help employees see everything isn’t all about the end result.
As already noted in this article, you’ll want to individualize appreciation, too. You need to recognize your people in a way that speaks to them. For example, not everyone wants to be applauded in a town hall.
Looking for employee recognition ideas? We’ve got you.
6. Avoid micromanaging
It’s easy to lose motivation when everything you do is going to be questioned or, worse, redone by a hyper-involved manager. When the leader can’t step back and allow individuals to try and fail, or do things in a different way, the worker can quickly get frustrated.
Micromanagers share their input frequently, obsess over small details, and have a hard time letting go. Instead, ensure your employees are adequately trained and have ongoing access to useful resources, then work on letting them have room to take ownership.
7. Encourage work-life balance
Lack of motivation often stems from feeling overwhelmed or overburdened. This may be because the person has been working long hours for too long. Or it may be connected to something that is happening outside of work. Either way, if you want your employees to remain engaged at work, you need to ensure that they are given time to recharge.
Offering flexible scheduling can help. We’ve also written in the past about how to encourage employees to take time off from work and its value. But a key thing to remember is that you need to model a willingness to rest and reset and avoid rewarding those work martyrs who are driving themselves into the ground.
Employee motivation starts with understanding
Knowing how to motivate employees as a leader, HR professional, or even an engaged colleague can support overall business success. Drawing on these strategies you may see increased employee engagement, improved retention, and greater initiative and ingenuity.
The better you understand your employees, the easier it is to engage them effectively. Work with Sogolytics experts to make the most of our employee experience platform and learn more about your people’s concerns, challenges, goals and passions.
