How to Keep Your Employees Motivated and Why It Matters So Much
When it comes to business, productivity and efficiency is key for success and profitability.
The key to productivity and efficiency is keeping your employees motivated and engaged.
It is vital for your profits, innovation and customer service.
Let’s look at the importance of employee motivation and dive into some top tips on how to keep your teams inspired.
Why Motivation Matters
Employee motivation has a direct impact on the financial health of your business.
A study by the Harvard Business Review (HBR) found that improving employee motivation can increase gross revenue by up to 47%.
To add to this, motivated employees are more likely to stay loyal to your company rather than looking for roles elsewhere. The HBR has also reported that a 5% increase in employee retention can also boost profitability by 25-85%.
In addition, other research found that employee motivation directly improves customer experience. I’m sure thinking back to recent customer experiences you’ve had you can appreciate that this is the case.
What Employees Value
So we’ve established that employee motivation is a key component of a successful business, but how can you motivate and engage the team?
It’s important to understand what your employees value so that you can use these factors to motivate them
Of course, competitive salary is often important but there are many other factors that come into play in terms of employee satisfaction. In fact, the HBR found that salary was surprisingly far down the average list of priorities, which are as follows:
- Role design – duties, responsibilities, goals, principles and objectives. Employees want to feel that their work matters and contributes to a greater good.
- Organisational identity – company culture, values and ethics should align with the employee’s personal beliefs.
- Career development – employees want to keep learning new skills and progress in their career.
- Relationships with colleagues – positive relationships within teams are a key motivator for many workers. A strong team dynamic can help employers retain staff as well as improve productivity and innovation.
- Leadership – employees want and value clear, consistent leadership.
- Compensation – salary and benefits are still important, but employees are increasingly looking for flexible working arrangements, social responsibility programmes and other benefits that go beyond just a pay cheque.
- Feedback, evaluation and opportunities to improve – employees want to receive feedback on a regular basis so that they can understand how they’re doing and what areas to focus on.
You may wish the use this list to create a survey for your employees to see if their values are inline with the research and the same order as this list.
How To Motivate Employees
Now you understand what your employees value, you can use these factors as the foundation of your employee motivation strategy.
A good starting point is with communication – keeping staff informed about company activities, sharing goals and objectives, and giving regular feedback will help employees feel more connected to their work. Remember that no-one wants to feel as though they’re stuck in a dead-end job or doing meaningless work.
However, as you can see highlighted above two of the points are connected to learning and development and providing your employees with training opportunities. This could be personal development or soft skills or technical development and qualifications.
This is where Halo Training Solutions can support you with financial awareness training and training in PowerPoint or Excel to help increase their understanding, learn new skills and help them understand what they are doing.
It’s also important to create a positive workplace culture where employees feel comfortable taking risks and voicing new ideas. This can be done through team-building exercises, offering training and development opportunities, and celebrating successes together.
Leadership is another key factor – employees need to feel that their leaders are competent and trustworthy. Leaders should be setting an example for the team, modelling desired behaviours’ and providing clear instructions.
Finally, it’s important to recognise and appreciate employees’ efforts. A simple ‘thank you’ can go a long way. However, internal awards and tokens of recognition are even more effective in motivating staff.
Employee motivation is a key component of any successful business. By understanding what employees value and using these factors to motivate them, you can create a positive work environment that encourages productivity and innovation. Increasing staff morale plays a powerful role in building a strong, profitable and innovative business so it’s well worth investing your time and energy into.
So if you want to find out more about our training whether it is the Finance for Non Finance Professionals training, Financial Awareness training or honing your skills on Powerpoint and Excel to achieve more then get in touch!