5 Tips to Help Business Owners Motivate Their Staff

By Rae Oliver

You simply cannot do without your employees. Regardless of the size of your business, they are integral to your success. 

Many businesses face challenges keeping their employees engaged and productive. Often organizations don’t have the resources to reward excellent employee performance and keep their staff properly motivated.

However, none of these challenges is insurmountable. 

It is certainly possible to offer your employees motivating incentives and rewards. These employee motivation rewards don’t always have to be offered in the form of financial bonuses. Today’s employees appreciate a wide range of gestures from their employers. An enjoyable workplace culture, recognition for work well done, and a kind and generous professional environment are a few examples. 

In this article, we offer a range of employee motivation ideas that will encourage your staff to give their best and uphold a positive company culture at all times.

What is Employee Motivation?

Employee motivation constitutes a variety of factors that encourage each staff member to work towards a set of company goals. Motivation can also be defined as the level of energy, enthusiasm, diligence, commitment, and creativity that your staff brings to the table on a daily basis.

The level of motivation among your employees is closely tied to how engaged they feel in your organization’s goals, growth, and development. Additionally, it has a lot to do with how empowered they feel within the workplace. 

Employee motivation ideas are easily split into two main categories:

1. Intrinsic motivation

In this form of motivation, an individual is motivated from within to achieve a certain goal. Praise and positive feedback will encourage an employee to display traits like curiosity, honesty, and persistence. Plus, they’ll accept feedback more positively and have a desire to achieve success on your company’s behalf.

2. Extrinsic motivation

This form of motivation is linked to external factors like recognition and rewards. Rewards like bonuses, benefits, awards, and public recognition can all go a long way in motivating your staff to get things done. To personalize your rewards, order engraved awards for your employees – this will demonstrate a higher level of appreciation.

Motivated employees are always an asset to their organizations. They have a critical role to play in a businesses’ success. Motivation is difficult to measure and quite challenging to control. But it’s easy to foster using the right tools and methods.

Employee Engagement Tips – How to Motivate Your Employees

#1: Shed Light on Workplace Giving and Kindness

The best way to foster a culture of workplace giving and kindness is to lead by example. By ensuring that your company is led compassionately, employees will know what kind of employee motivation conduct is expected from them. In turn, they will actively contribute to upholding a positive culture. Bear in mind that every person in your team is an individual who needs to be treated with fairness and respect in order to thrive.

It’s important to encourage your employees to learn more about each other. Kindness can differ from person to person depending on their circumstances, communication styles, and needs. When employees know more about each other’s lives and preferences, they are better equipped to be kind and empathetic towards each other. All while understanding the hidden challenges each person may be facing.

Employers should be encouraged to foster a spirit of giving and acceptance and support cultural diversity at work. This reflects your organization’s greater goals and mission. Offering each other praise, recognition and empathy can help each staff member feel as though they are welcome and respected at work. This will motivate them to work with their team towards common goals.

#2: Empower Your Employees

As a business owner, employees deserve your utmost respect and admiration. They will also need a range of tools and resources to successfully meet your organization’s needs. Empower your employees by providing them with any skills or resources they may need. This may vary from simple stationery and computer access to specific software knowledge they require.

You may need to provide your employees with training to equip them to get the job done well. Providing opportunities for growth shows your employees that you value them as individuals. It shows that you are invested in their professional and personal growth. It also helps them avoid feeling stagnant and bored in their positions, but rather encourages them to look to the future for continued growth. In turn, this boosts overall motivation amongst your staff.

Another great way to motivate your employees is to conduct regular performance evaluations for them. This shows that you regard them as coworkers and that you support their efforts and want to see them succeed. Grant them the respect of spending time speaking to them about their work. And, give them more responsibilities and autonomy over their roles where it is appropriate to do so.

#3: Proper Communication

Employees should have the benefit of seeing the direct impact of their hard work on the companies they work for. Communicating effectively, openly, and honestly with your staff about how your business is progressing and how they have contributed allows them to feel integral to your organization’s growth and the bigger picture. 

Rather than making assumptions about how your employees are doing, business owners should be encouraged to ask questions. Ask your employees about their experience and really listen to what they have to say before making comments or giving feedback. This will help them feel heard and better understood. Accepting and taking their input on board and handling issues with empathy and understanding will help to make them feel like valued members of your team.

#4: Recognizing Great Performance

It’s all too easy for employees to become demotivated and despondent if their hard work on a project goes unseen or unnoticed. If you want to boost your staff’s morale and encourage them to respect your leadership, it’s essential to recognize their achievements. Tell them exactly how those achievements have contributed to your organization’s overall growth and development.

Employees should be regularly provided with recognition for their hard work and innovation. Show your appreciation immediately upon noticing good work. Don’t be shy to praise your team members in front of their colleagues either. 

If your company has the budget, hand out gifts, awards, or bonuses to your employees based on their performance. But keep in mind that simple recognition and thanks for their hard work will go a long way in keeping your staff eager to meet company goals.

#5: Create a Positive Workplace Culture and Engagement

One of the simplest and most effective ways to improve your workplace culture and employee engagement rates is to develop an employee and volunteer engagement program.

Often, the involvement of teams and volunteers is handled by departments below the top of our organization. Unfortunately, the department handling these processes is not always well suited to the job. A robust and motivating engagement program should ideally be handled by the very top of your organization.

Your employees should be viewed as crucial for the organizational management of your company. Their duties and training should be discussed in the boardroom, and the discussions should include long-term planning on how to keep these all-important people engaged and satisfied at work.

Employee empowerment and engagement programs should be developed by managers, leaders, and supervisors for best results. Include goals and strategies on how to create a quality, memorable and low-stress experience for your valuable workers. These strategies should be used to create a set of standards and guidelines that your organization can implement across all staff touchpoints.

To begin crafting your engagement and empowerment strategy, consider the factors that have motivated staff to join your organization. These could include

• A will to contribute to a cause they believe in
• A desire to learn new skills
• A desire for a sense of control and autonomy that they cannot find in other industries
• A desire for enacting positive social change
• A need to fulfill social, business, and or educational expectations and mandates
• A desire to have fun, meet new people and truly enjoy their daily work.

Now, consider how you can create an engagement strategy that meets these varied needs and motivates your employees to give their best when it comes to contributing to your organization.

The Takeaway: Motivate for Long-Term Success

Engaging and motivating employees is easier than you may think. All you need to do as their leader is provide them with the employee motivation, tools, resources, skills, and positive company culture to enable them to do so. Use these employee engagement tips to guide your efforts.

Allow your teams to grow, to show each other kindness and compassion, and to think creatively and your collective work will create change that furthers your organization’s goals. Remember to have fun with your staff too. They share your innate desire for success and are just waiting for the right chance to prove themselves.