How to Motivate Your Team

It doesn’t matter what team you manage, in what industry, the issue is the same the world out.  How do you keep your employees motivated constantly and consistently?

It is so important to keep your employees motivated, when an employee is happy, they engage more with their work and this will, in turn, have a positive effect on the whole team and their output.   If your team are happy then the chances are this will mean your customers are happy.

OpsPal knows a thing or two about motivating employees, each member of OpsPal has managed people at some point in their career.  Everybody is different and different things motivate them but here are a few ideas from the OpsPal team:

1. Make People Feel Important and Valued

It is a basic need for most people to want to feel valued. This is easily done with some praise and recognition for a job well done, praising in front of peers adds a bit of punch too.  Verbal or written praise (in emails) can go a long way, or step it up a notch with prizes.  They don’t need to be too extravagant, a bottle of wine or vouchers for a meal out.

2. Clear and Frequent Communication

People don’t like being left in the dark about anything, this is true too for employees.  If employees hear things through office gossip this makes them feel undervalued.  Make your communication channels clear. This could be as simple as a 10 minute weekly catch-up meeting, a face-to-face or online meeting makes it easier to explain things and clear up any confusion.

3. Support and Encourage Career Progression

Without career progression, some employees may feel they have nothing to work towards.  Extra responsibilities can be given to staff to put them in better stead for promotions.  Provide ongoing training and development opportunities.

4. Give Employees Responsibility

It is important to get the balance right with employees’ responsibilities, give them small menial tasks and they will soon become unhappy, overload them with work and they become stressed.  Again keeping clear communication channels will allow employees to let you know if they are overwhelmed with work or the opposite.  Working with employees to determine what work they can manage lets them know that their opinion is important to you.

5. Create a Positive Working Environment

This is a more tricky one to implement as it can depend on conflicts and negativity.  A good tip is a make sure there are appropriate platforms to allow employees to give feedback.   Try and make the work environment fun, this could be celebrating birthdays or having a treat on a Friday.  Making your team feel valued will help make the environment a positive on

6. Define Career Paths

This goes hand in hand with developing staff progression.  It’s important to create a clear path to where they are headed and how they can get there.  Appraisals and target-setting offer a great background for this.  OpsPal has the capacity to evidence staff performance for appraisals and one-to-one meetings.

If you would like to talk to us about how OpsPal can help your business contact us on 07398 894678 or email craig@opspal.com