Employee Motivation: Benefits And Ways To Motivate Your Workforce
As the competition in the corporate world is inflating generation by generation, the workforce is being delegated a truckload of targets to reach the competitive benchmark.
We all know how pressure and burden can discourage an individual. Keeping employees motivated is now becoming a challenge.
You must understand that when your employees are unmotivated, it can cost you around $550 billion annually. But when your employees are highly motivated, you can improve your profits by a total of 27%.
To give you an idea, let us suppose you are a content marketing agency.
Your work circles one of the most important aspects of a marketing strategy i.e. content creation. Creating extraordinary content requires you to be focused, encouraged, happy, and determined. And you need extraordinary content to be able to match your competitors.
If your team of writers and designers is not motivated, the content produced will be of no use to you. Getting the quality that you need requires your employees to be committed and motivated.
A highly motivated team has the capability to create content that is at par with your competition. Sometimes it might even exceed that level. You can invest in rank tracking tools to keep a check on your website’s rank as compared to your competitors if you wish to see how fruitful your efforts have been.
Reaching the top rank is just one of the many benefits of motivating your employees, below are six more.
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Benefits of employee motivation
There are a range of advantages that come with a highly motivated workforce. Check them out here:
- Minimal absenteeism
According to a study by Gallup, highly engaged teams lead to 41% lower absenteeism.
When your employees are motivated, they set certain goals for themselves. Achieving these work goals becomes a crucial part of their lives. As a result, they feel happy and focused when they are working.
This reduces the level of absenteeism in the team. They avoid taking an off without a good reason. They believe it will hinder their progress and lead to a lag.
- Improved employee retention
With an increase in the number of businesses every single day, attracting and retaining talent is a challenge. When employees are motivated, the staff turnover rates reduce. It means that employees tend to stick to their roles for a longer period of time.
This happens as a result of the positive effects that their work reflects. They might also realize their role in helping their company achieve success. This reduces employee churn and consequently, the costs of recruitment and employee training also diminish.
- Enhance performance
Motivation directly affects the performance of an employee. When they are unmotivated, their performance in terms of punctuality, quality, and overall output will suffer. Motivated employees are highly engaged and focused.
They arrive on time and strive to achieve their targets for the day, without compromising on the quality of work they deliver. This improves productivity levels and increases the output of a business in its entirety.
- Better customer service
You have your business because you have a loyal audience. Your customers expect an impressive and good experience every single time they engage with your brand.
Your motivated employees make sure that your customers receive the best service ever. A highly engaged team will always put its best foot forward when communicating with your customers.
When a customer receives such a warm response from a brand, they tend to spread positive news about you.
As a result of your employee motivation efforts, you will also gain free word-of-mouth publicity by conversion of your customers into your brand advocates.
- Stronger candidates
Suppose you’re an agency that offers reseller SEO services. You will need strong and highly engaged project managers to understand the requirements of your client and delegate the work exactly how it is supposed to be done to the team. There can be no scope of misunderstanding and poor quality work.
Finding talented and relevant candidates for your business can be slightly difficult. However, if your current employees are happy, they will talk about it to others. This will help create a good reputation for your brand in the market.
As a result, you will be able to attract leading project managers (or, any other candidates) for your business.
- Introduction of positive work culture
Toxic work culture can make it hard for a business to grow. When your employees are motivated, they are more happy and satisfied with their progress. This induces a sense of positivity in the workforce.
Motivated employees find it easy to coordinate with their peers and managers. They can collaborate, offer peer-to-peer recognition, and also offer support to each other to overcome a challenge. Naturally, this behavior of employees and managers gives rise to a positive work culture that’s driven by mutual trust.
Ways to motivate your employees
For positive employee engagement, you need your employees to be motivated. Now that we know why you should keep your employees motivated, here’s the answer to how to do it.
- Acknowledge and appreciate employees’ achievement
Let’s be real. We all look for validation and recognition.
When your employees get recognized for their contribution to the company’s success, they get a sense of satisfaction and instant gratification. And who doesn’t like instant gratification?
You should start appreciating your employees more. Acknowledge their goals being and targets being achieved. It will motivate them to perform more than you can imagine.
- Improve communication
How you communicate with your employees matters a lot when it comes to employee motivation. You should make it a habit to take out a short period of time every day to talk to each employee. You can discuss their concerns, ideas, and challenges they are facing.
Once you do that, try coming up with effective solutions for the same. This will help keep your employees satisfied. Also, you will get regular insights into your business from your workforce.
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- Encourage friendly environment
We all have twenty-four hours in a day. For working professionals, most of their time is spent in their offices. You should create a space where those hours are spent comfortably. Make sure that your work environment is positive and friendly.
The friendlier your environment, the more appealing it will be. Your employees would willingly want to work with their team and go to work every day. They won’t feel they are going to work because it’s their job and they HAVE to.
- Reward employees
For many, they want more than just a pat on the back.
They want to be rewarded for their achievements, which is understandable. You can offer simple incentives and rewards to your employees. It will keep them motivated and engaged to keep performing better.
Your rewards do not always have to be monetary benefits. You can offer a free meal at a high-end restaurant. Or, a week of personal parking space. Vouchers and company benefits are also good options for rewards.
- Host a friendly competition
You can take this opportunity to healthily nurture the competitive side of your workforce.
When you encourage friendly competition, it helps create a productive environment. We all want our employees to be more productive to achieve the desired results.
This competition will encourage the workforce to participate and perform their best. It might also lead to an increased fellowship among employees.
- Train your managers
You need effective managers and leaders to motivate your employees. It is only those who are well-trained and understanding who can help make your efforts fruitful.
It’s not only the employees that need coaching and development. It’s the managers as well. Keep them updated with the best practices. Help them understand the ever-evolving characteristics and motivational factors of employees.
If they don’t know about the changing trends, they won’t be the leader worth following. And you don’t want that.
- Set realistic expectations
Last but not the least, don’t give your workforce the targets that you know are unreal. We discussed in the introduction how the workforce is being delegated too much work. It’s best to avoid putting too much pressure on employees if you wish for them to stay motivated.
Understand your employees’ capabilities and then set expectations and goals for them that are realistic.
- Encourage creativity
Employees often have creative and innovative ideas that they would want to share. However, not every company encourages freedom or offers space for employees.
You should take a step towards involving your employees more in different aspects of your business. When they realize that their ideas and thoughts are being valued, they tend to start performing better to be in the good books of the leaders.
- Introduce development programs
What is a better motivator than getting paid to upskill and develop? You should initiate learning and development programs for your employees. These programs could be inclined towards improving their existing skills or helping employees learn more.
This is a beneficial step for both of you. While employees get prepared for higher positions, they will also become better performers. You can use their skills and knowledge to strive for an impressive overall output of the business as a whole.
- Embrace employee empowerment
We’ve already talked about how employees should be given a platform or space to share their ideas. Sometimes, your employees should also be given enough freedom to make decisions. Your employees need to know that you trust them.
When your employees feel empowered, when they know that they don’t always have to do what others are telling them, they feel motivated. They get a sense of ownership and put their best foot forward in every task they undertake.
- Provide structured feedback
If you don’t tell your employees what they did was right or wrong, they will never understand the proper way of doing things.
You must understand the importance of structured feedback. Go beyond correct or incorrect. Tell your employees where they went wrong. Let them know better ways to perform that task. It allows them to look for opportunities for improvement.
If what they did was right, inform them and help them stay in the loop of where the project is heading.
This feedback will help them grow and gain more knowledge about what they lack.
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Conclusion
Make efforts in ensuring your employee’s happiness and comfort. They should feel appreciated and valued. When your employees understand how crucial their role is in the success of your company, they will do their best to keep performing better than before.
So, if you have goals that you want to achieve as a business, make sure your employees are motivated enough to reach their personal and professional goals. You both will achieve what you both desire.
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