Here’s How Easy It Is to Motivate Your Employees to Succeed

Your employees want to do the best job possible from the day that you hire them. However, there are many reasons why your people may not be able to fulfill that goal. One reason may have to do with a lack of motivation to operate at a peak level of productivity. The good news is that it’s easier than you think to motivate employees to succeed.

Give Them Clear Goals to Reach

It is a lot easier to be successful when you know what success looks like. For your employees, this means giving them clear goals and timelines for when those goals must be met. For instance, you may tell your sales department to close on 100 deals by the end of the month or your customer service department to increase customer satisfaction by 10 percent by the end of the quarter. By giving clear goals and timelines, your people now have something tangible to work toward.

Provide the Help That They Need to Succeed

As a manager or business owner, your goal is to help your people succeed in any way that you can. For instance, if an employee is having trouble convincing a customer to make a purchase, you may want to step in and help overcome those objections. In some cases, all a customer wants before making a purchase is to feel valued. Knowing that the owner of a company is willing to personally get involved in a sale may help that customer perceive him or herself as a valued patron.

This is just one way in which you can become involved to help your employees become more productive and successful at work. If your people feel overworked, it may be worthwhile to hire temporary workers or offer your workers extra vacation time once the spike in business is over. Knowing that the weight of an increased workload will soon be lifted from their shoulders may be enough for them to power through in the short-term.

Make Work an Enjoyable Experience

One of the best ways to motivate your workers is to make work fun. For instance, you may offer your sales team a night out on the town if they meet a sales goal for the day or for within the next hour. You could also decide that the salesperson who has the most sales in the next hour gets the night out courtesy of the company.

Other perks such as an on-site masseuse or a game room for use during breaks or lunches may help to improve morale at work. Depending on what your company does, it may be appropriate to allow employees to play games while on the clock to help spur creativity or burn off some stress after a busy morning or busy lunch period.

By offering these perks to your workers, you can improve morale while also helping your workers get to know each other better. For those who may be a little more shy or reserved, bonding over a game of foosball or another shared interest may be preferable to having to socialize by making small talk with others in the office.

Empower Your People to Make Decisions

If you want your people to succeed, you want them to take an active role in their success. This means that you have to empower them to make decisions without always having to run to a manager or the company owner for permission. By allowing them to make decisions on their own, you also force them to solve problems on their own.

What your people ultimately learn is that they are more than capable of reaching any goal that they are given. They also learn that you have their backs and want them to do well in any situation that they encounter. When an employee knows that their boss or the owner of the company trusts them to do the right thing, his or her confidence will skyrocket.

That confidence will then breed more success that benefits the company as much as it does the employee. Over time, you may find that you can leave more of the decision making to your employees while you find ways to grow the business or spend more time enjoying the fruits of your hard work.

Learn to Give Credit Where It Is Due

Employees love when they get recognition for their accomplishments. Therefore, make it a point to give credit where it is due. If the janitor was the one to come up with an idea for a product, name it after that person or otherwise recognize his or her suggestion. If someone in the accounting department comes up with a way to save the company $10,000 in the next month, make it a point to recognize that important contribution. When there is a reward for working hard and going above what an employer asks of an employee, you will find that most or all of your people will strive for greater levels of achievement.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to motivate your people to succeed at work. All you need to do is give them the tools and resources needed to get the job done on a regular basis. From there, you need to actually recognize your people when they meet their goals or go above the expectations set for them. If you can do that, you will have a company full of motivated individuals who will give you everything they have each day.