Mobile logo
  • Home
  • About Us
  • HR Recruitment
  • In-House Recruitment
  • E-Learning
  • Book a Call
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy
PrevHow you pay, is what you get!04 January 2021NextRecruiting in a downturn: It’s not rocket science07 January 2021
  • Employee Engagement

7 Ways to Keep Your Employees Motivated at Work

January 6, 2021in Employee Engagement 0 Comments 0 Likes

Keeping your colleagues happy at work is the most important thing you can do in HR. As we know people drive profit and so it makes sense that happy employees will be more productive and motivated. You want your employees to want to come into work every day, and there are a number of things you can do to help create this kind of environment.

1) Have Faith in Your Employees

Your employees need to know they are trusted – offer out responsibility, don’t just delegate it. Offering responsibility also creates friendly competition and will force your workers to step up. Encourage your employees to take on challenging jobs and roles to help them thrive. Setting minimum number targets is sometimes necessary- be it sales, the number of emails sent out etc – but can be bad form. This can stress your employees and you can’t expect them to be equally productive on every single shift. Worse still they will spend more time trying to work out ways to hit the numbers rather than focusing on the quality of what they are doing! I wonder how many people have left the recruitment industry prematurely, due to the archaic (and frankly lazy) management style of giving everyone a generic set of KPIs regardless of their individual circumstances and beating them up if not achieved.

2) Prioritise Employee Health and Self Care

Start workplace initiatives to encourage a mentally healthy environment. A workplace running club could be a great way to build relationships amongst employees and improve the mental and physical health of your workers. Why not hold a walking meeting? Take your colleagues outside and hold a walk and talk! Encourage your colleagues to take breaks. Sometimes a few minutes in a different environment can refresh and re-engage. Promoting flexible working even if it is just a day a week at home or flexibility around start/finish times can really make a difference to people who are juggling a commute etc.

3) Connect with Your Employees Outside of Work

Arrange teambuilding exercises – but be careful to avoid tired clichés. Nobody wants a “which team can build the best x,y or z!” Do not force the fun.

Employees may prefer a group night out or a nature-based excursion. Ask around the office or offer a poll to let your workers decide what they would enjoy the most! Charity days are a great way of giving back to the community while allowing your workers to let their hair down. Think about integrating a monthly day outside of the office doing something enjoyable.

4) Praise your colleagues often

A little bit of praise can go a long way. Letting somebody know they have done a great job could be the difference between a bad day and a great day and will also create mutual respect between you and your employee.

“Employee of the month” may be old school but can still be used to great effect – why not try awarding different categories for each month? This way, employees with different strengths can still prosper. Make sure the competition remains friendly and inclusive.

5) Understand Your Employees Are Human Beings

It is vital that you see your employees as people with their own goals, ambitions, and problems. They are not just cogs in your working machine. Be understanding with time-off requests. Take an interest in your colleagues outside lives and support them when you are able. It is pointless to lambast your employees for being 5 minutes late every now and then. Create an environment of understanding. Does an employee look stressed today? Ask them what’s up and see if you can help.

6) Provide tools for growth

Offer training programs for your workers in different aspects of the business. This allows them to pursue their own ambitions with the help of your company. The last thing you want an employee to think is that they are in a dead-end job. Make sure there is constant room for progression in your workspace. Have a suggestion box or similar to take your employees input in. What would they like to see in the workplace to help them? If you continually integrate worker’s suggestions, employees will feel they have the power to make changes.

7) Offer Perks That Fulfill Employee’s Needs

Take the time to ask your employees what kind of benefits they would like. Gym memberships, free lunch, funding a training program, paternity leave, etc. Adapt the benefits you offer to help your employees enjoy their lives outside of work. Emphasise the two-way relationship between the employer and employee. It is important also to recognize what is great for one employee may have no relevance for another and so a good selection or flexibility is important.

If your office has a strict dress code, why not have a day of the week where workers can wear whatever they like? Or relax the dress code altogether for employees that are not customer-facing. Using some or all of these human resources strategies will help you create a happier, more enjoyable workplace for your employees. You should strive to be the place that everybody wants to work at. Happy employees are productive and satisfied at work. Treat your workers like a big family and in return, they will treat your company in the same way!

It’s sometimes easy in HR to over complicate things, however often if you get the basics right it can make a huge difference to the culture of your business. Organisations are not much without their people and so it makes sense to treat them in a human way and not just see them as a cost on a spreadsheet.

 

A bit about us!

Written by Paul Withers

0 Likes
Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

HR Manager – Hampshire
HR Manager – Hampshire
Empower your people with Training Sensei
Empower your people with Training Sensei
Global HR Partner | Cambridge | East Anglia | 40-50k
Global HR Partner | Cambridge | East Anglia | 40-50k
Top Tips for Successful Recruitment in 2022
Top Tips for Successful Recruitment in 2022
Paying employees good wages makes sense!
Paying employees good wages makes sense!
Talent Acquisition Specialist | Munich | c70k +/-
Talent Acquisition Specialist | Munich | c70k +/-
HR Generalist | Munich | 55-65k
HR Generalist | Munich | 55-65k
Hiring into your HR team
Hiring into your HR team
HR Recruitment Cambridge
HR Recruitment Cambridge
What do we believe?
What do we believe?
Career Pathways to Executive Management
Career Pathways to Executive Management
You have the right to love your job!
You have the right to love your job!
How are you finding recruiting into your HR team?
How are you finding recruiting into your HR team?
Would you support a vaccination only workplace?
Would you support a vaccination only workplace?
Let us introduce ourselves
Let us introduce ourselves
Load more

Let’s
talk

Book a Call
WRITE TO US
  • hello@thehrguys.io
  • Privacy
  • The HR Guys Limited
OUR HR NETWORKS

Dublin | Cambridge | London

Munich | Vienna | Budapest

© All Rights Reserved The HR Guys
Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}