How to motivate employees in 10 steps

10 steps to motivate employees:

1. Stop micromanaging
2. Give ownership
3. Push employees out of their comfort zone
4. Share information constantly
5. Create an environment focused on the top performers
6. Use a simple employee recognition software
7. Fire underperformers
8. Encourage innovation and creativity
9. Invest in staff learning opportunities
10. Do not hire clones

Wondering how to motivate employees?

Tap My Back  - Employee Engagement Software

The secret to motivating employees seems to rely on first, knowing your team individuals well. And consequently, customize the way you recognize and motivate them according to their specific preferences.

Recent studies proved that the key to motivating employees is far from being money centered. Therefore, it is essential that you understand what you need to do in order to keep your team engaged and focused on the common goal. You need to spend at least as much time building an engaging ecosystem as you do hiring new people and motivating your staff.

1. Stop Micromanaging

Even though people often look at you as if you were Superman, it does not mean you actually have his superpowers. Being a manager at the same time you are an employee is something that only Clark Kent could dream of.

Alysa Gregory wrote a pretty insightful post on how you can effectively address this common problem with specific techniques. The problem with micromanagement is that it will make your employees too much dependent on you for direction and therefore less likely to learn, think and produce quality outcomes for themselves. Provide direction and give assistance when required but also provide freedom for employees to do things their own way.

2. Give ownership

Over time workers can develop what's called tunnel vision making them start focusing only on their own duties and deadlines. Rather than working for the company goals, they work towards meeting the minimum requirements.

A Forbes article recently explores the advantages of leveraging something they defined as “psychological ownership” - the extent to which an employee feels as though their organization or their job is “theirs” (i.e., “this is MY company!”) to the point that the company becomes an important part of an employee’s self-identity.

In order to foster this mentality across your team, you should guarantee that each collaborator gets to understand how his role impacts directly the final customer as well as his colleagues. Only then it's possible to motivate employees.

Make sure your team feels responsible for what the customer is buying.

3. Push employees out of their comfort zone

Even though some managers feel their staff does little further than what is required of them, the fact is that by nature most people do get bored of doing a specific task over and over again. Therefore, a key ingredient to making people step out of their comfort zone relies on leadership. It starts with you. Step out of your comfort zone and describe the process to your staff as well as the reasons why. Your behavior will soon resonate. Then, be ready to identify barriers and understand what motivates the individuals in order to guide your employees' breakthroughs.

Staying within your comfort zone is a good way to prepare for today, but it's a terrible way to prepare for tomorrow - David Peterson, Director, Executive Coaching & Leadership at Google

4. Share information constantly

When you are growing fast, assumptions and goals change at the same pace. As a business leader, you have a clearer perspective on the bigger picture than your employees do.

Spreading the intel gets everyone on the same layer as you are and at the same time strengthens the feeling among workers that they are an important part of the organization. Nowadays, you can easily share information in several different ways: - Standup meetings - Daily wrap-up emails - Open Documents (Google Docs) - Team instant messaging tools (Slack, Facebook for teams ) - Project management tools (Trello, Asana )

5. Create an environment focused on the top performers

All the efforts you put into improving your team's working conditions should always be focused on satisfying the top-performing employees. Eitan Sharir develops a thorough analysis of the impact a team building upon a high-performance culture may generate. Your mission is to understand the best way to motivate your most talented employees in order to improve their production rate. Get to know what roadblocks they're hitting and make sure you clear them so that they have no barriers to getting the most important work done.

6. Use a simple employee recognition

Most recent studies indicate that employees feel recognition more fulfilling than any monetary rewards or gifts. Even though almost everyone already gets this point, managers struggle to deliver constant recognition and feedback when there’s no system implemented that eases the process. Tap my Back tackles most of these challenges. It is a tool designed to facilitate flat recognition in a fun and intuitive way. Whether for remote or local teams, recognition is public and feedback private. On top of it, team leaders have access to analytics on the taps given so that they can extract insights that make them better managers.

7. Fire underperformers

Even though it may seem a paradox in terms of team motivation, firing underperformers actually works well in motivating your best employees. When other employees see these individuals getting away with underperformance, then they start to underperform. Therefore, firing—as long as you explain to your team why people were fired—can actually motivate employees to improve daily.

8. Encourage Innovation and Creativity

As a manager, you must realize that the vast majority of innovations come from the people who are interacting with customers.

Fostering creativity will not only bolster employee motivation within the organization but also help in creating a more flexible working environment as it creates an openness to change.

Disruption either in terms of products, markets, or processes is the common ground of every growing company

9. Invest in staff learning opportunities

People who get the chance to grow their skills and expertise take more pride in their jobs. So, you should motivate employees in your organization for them to gain new skills.

However, providing training and learning programs is not enough. You must ensure that employees are able to apply the knowledge gained. The purpose is for them to accomplish their work and further benefit their career utility.

You can do this in many ways, such as by providing on-the-job training to teach your employees new skills.

10. Do not hire Clones

It often happens that new employees dress, sound, and think the same way as the one who recruited them. The last thing any entrepreneur should try is to recruit a bunch of"mini-me's". Rather try surrounding yourself with experts who excel in different areas and bring unique perspectives. It will create a much more exciting environment for everyone in your company.

Try yourself  Tap My Back's - free trial!