These are five additional ways that you can successfully create an encouraging work environment while increasing employee.
1. Distinguish your employees. It is essential that you empathize with your employees. Know about their family; know about what they do after hours, what interests them. This is not meant to be prying into an employee’s personal life, but knowing an employee can help you to resolve what motivates that employee. Different people are motivated by dissimilar things. What does the employee want? What do they want from this job, from their life, and for their future? Reaching goals can be difficult. Helping someone to reach a goal at work is impossible if you do not know what that goal is.
2. Discover more. It is your responsibility to create enthusiasm in the workplace. Therefore it is up to you to continue to study innovative ways to spur employees to action. You might opt to take classes that offered as short courses at HR firms or online universities. This will give you a fabulous opportunity to continue to learn new ways to stimulate your employees
3. Splurge special time with your employees. Take a few minutes out of your day to just talk with your employees. Give them an opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns or simply ask how their week went. This will demonstrate how much you care about his or her happiness within the company. You can also schedule performance reviews either once a month, once a year or however often is comfortable for you. This will allow you time to sit down and spend a little more time with the employee and give you a chance to discuss the highs and lows of the period in which the review is accomplished. Positive conversations, even on a casual level are a great way to increase employee motivation. Schedule one-on-ones and leave titles at the door.
4. Understand the employees’ feelings about their career. Most employees start out in a job on the bottom with hopes of advancement. One way to increase employee drive is to discuss the likelihood of advancement or lateral movement within the company structure. It might be a different position, or a promotion, in a sister company. Your employees should know that you care about the things that they care about. Let them know that you are there to help them achieve their goals and they will give you 110%
5. Be transparent. You as a manager know what it feels like when a higher up seems to be keeping something from you. Even though there may not be a secret, the big boss still hasn’t informed you on what is going on. Your employees may feel this way consistently. It is very important to keep employees informed about issues that arise in the company even if it does not directly affect them. Employees want to know about the company and they want to be involved. It is a good idea to have regular “catch-up” meetings, just to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Prepare employees if a major event is going to happen, such as a leveraged buyout or inspection by the CEO. Another way to explode inspiration among employees is to hold consultations when the company is planning on changing existing policies. Invite feed back from the employees and ask if they have any ideas about how to resolve the issue.
You as manager holds the keys to create a work environment that beneficial for company and employee growth. Sun Tzu asserts that “You are only as strong as your weakest link”. Increasing motivation among employees will make each link a little stronger and forge a tougher backbone for the company.
Joseph R. Plazo is founder of Exceed Global, JobCentralAsia [http://www.jobcentralasia.com] and Empowered Development. After achieving financial independence at 22, he authored five NLP books, engaged in pro-bono mentoring and indulged in his passion for radionics. Always to take the initiative, his battle cry is “Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.