If you are experiencing a lack of motivation from your employees, you may need to look internally at your workplace culture, internal processes, and other ways your business does things to see if you can improve employee performance. Whilst lack of motivation can be caused by factors at home, the workplace environment can play a large part in employee performance and willingness to work productively.
To get the most from your team, use these tips from Gold Coast HR Consultant team Industryus HR:
Build a positive environment
Create an environment that encourages collaboration, openness, and respect. Celebrate successes and encourage continuous improvement.
- Encourage collaboration by offering opportunities for team members to work together on projects or tasks. Or hold regular team meetings where collaborative tasks and ideas are at the centre so that this kind of culture is fostered.
- Encourage transparency and honesty, and follow through on your commitments. Leaders that make statements or promises that they don’t honor create a culture of distrust.
- Ensure that everyone treats others with courtesy, dignity, and respect, regardless of their role, their position, how much money they make for the business, their gender, etc. Don’t just say it! Ensure poor behaviour and conflicts are addressed in the workplace consistently and evenly. A culture of disharmony is not the way to improve employee performance.
Communicate effectively
Clearly communicate goals, expectations, and feedback. Provide regular updates and encourage open communication channels.
- Encourage team members to provide feedback and suggestions on work-related matters. Provide opportunities for anonymous feedback if needed.
- Encourage active listening skills by modeling this behavior yourself and encouraging others to do the same.
- Create a culture where asking questions is encouraged and valued. Provide opportunities for team members to ask questions in meetings or through other channels. Have an open-door policy.
- Schedule regular check-ins with team members to discuss work progress and address any concerns. Showing your team that you are consistently too busy for them is a real de-motivator.
- Share relevant information with your team members and encourage them to share information with one another. This may be done via team meetings, quick huddles, or adopting technology such as an intranet or apps like Slack.
Develop your team
Invest in your team’s development and help them acquire new skills.
- Learning doesn’t always have to be costly. Search for free online seminars and courses from subject matter experts that employees can attend during work time. They will feel like you are investing in them and it mixes up their workday too. Even better, put the seminar on the big screen, get a cup of tea, and make a meeting of it!
- Ongoing learning and offering opportunities for career growth can also be achieved without costly outside support. Allow employees to be exposed to new skill sets by cross-training or even spending a day in the life of someone else. Assign them a mentor if one is available, or train them in a new task that might broaden their role a little if they are showing signs of being bored. The offer of challenging and meaningful projects that align with their strengths and interests will improve motivation.
Foster teamwork
Encourage your team to work together and foster a sense of camaraderie.
- Make sure every team member understands where they fit into the bigger picture and how their work contributes to the end product or service. Likewise, ensure everyone understands what others do each day in the organisation so that everyone’s contribution is respected and appreciated. Silos or an ‘us against them’ mentality are a big culture killer, so this one is important.
- Celebrate achievements together as a team and also team achievements (as opposed to recognising only individuals).
- Get out together as a team. Whether it is a seminar, event, or just a coffee catch-up, it’s nice for the team to spend time together in environments other than the confines of the office.
- Encourage an “all in” workplace culture where the entire team is responsible for keeping the ship afloat. For example, the team pitches in to clean the fridge out once a quarter (or it’s rostered), or buying the birthday cake is up to a different person each month, rather than just one person each time. No one wants to feel like the office slave, so by encouraging a shared sense of responsibility, respect for others is encouraged.
Recognise and reward good performance
Acknowledge and reward good performance, whether it’s through financial incentives, promotions, or simple recognition.
- Ensure you have a solid system and process in place that enables your managers to objectively measure employee performance and a mechanism for providing regular feedback so that you can improve employee performance. Employees like feedback and when good employees don’t receive constructive feedback about their performance, it can lead to a feeling of de-motivation and being taken for granted. Therefore make sure feedback is a priority – for everyone.
- Link pay to performance (measurable performance). A tried and tested way to maintain performance levels is where the annual increase or an incentive is performance-based. Unless you are required to by law, think twice about giving employees an increase where they are under a formal performance management process or have received formal warnings for poor conduct as this is a surefire way to demotivate your good people.
- The words ‘thank you’ go a long way. But amplify the impact by telling employees why you are thanking them and how much you appreciate their contribution.
Be flexible
Offer flexible work arrangements where possible to help employees balance their work and personal commitments. In 2023, those employers who are not offering flexible work opportunities for their teams are seriously disadvantaged.
- Think of how you can offer flexible working arrangements and make it happen! (as opposed to thinking how you can’t).
- Flexible work isn’t just working from home, although work from home is highly sought after by employees. Other options include part-time work, job sharing, condensed work weeks, and amended work days (e.g. starting earlier).
- Make sure you have a quality Flexible Work Agreement in place. Contact us if you need help with that one.
Improve employee performance by leadership – lead by example
Model the behaviors and attitudes that you expect from your team. Be honest, transparent, and approachable, and be willing to listen to feedback and make changes as needed.
As HR professionals, the amount of times we see one rule for senior leaders and a different set of rules for employees is astonishing. Culture comes from the very top and it will only ever be great if the very top is aligned. As culture is a key predictor of employee motivation it’s pretty important if you want to improve employee performance and motivation.
If you need support with changing the factors that contribute to employee motivation, get in touch with Industryus HR. With years of experience in large organisations, we are your Gold Coast HR Consultant of choice. Book a FREE INTRODUCTORY CALL.
Or call us on 07 5655 4047.