There are hundreds of reasons why your staff might not be working to their potential. They might be suffering personal issues, or they may lack sleep due to a newborn in the home. They might be new to your staff, and finding their feet, or they may have been in their position with too long without a pay rise or promotion, thus losing their motivation. Whatever the malady, you can incentivise and reengage your workers with some of the following steps, outlined below, to help your staff achieve more in their working weeks.
Conversation
There’s nothing like an honest conversation to get the most out of your staff, whether these are causal, as you pass by their desks, or more formal, in a one-to-one meeting environment, you need to make sure that staff are able to maintain a constant line of communication with you. It’s in this way that they’ll be able to air concerns or share triumphs with you as soon as they’re raised – helping you guide them to better work, and showing you how your workers are feeling from week to week.
Feedback
Further from the communication point outlined above is the important aspect to management which comes from feedback. Listening to your staff and their problems is important, but sometimes they’ll only give you the most honest and important feedback when they’re guaranteed anonymity. As such, a workplace employee feedback survey, like those supported by inpulse.com, can be the perfect way to glean from your co-workers and colleagues what you really need to know – and a great way, too, to get your staff reengaged around the points of feedback that they most want to see making a difference within your business.
Targets
Setting targets, whether large or small, is a great way to show your employees a little bit of a carrot when they’re working. If they know that hitting their targets will win them a voucher each week, or if there are bonuses and other rewards set up for meeting their targets, they’ll strive that little bit harder to hand in the best kind of work, on a regular basis, for your business. Targets should already inform your high-level strategic thinking regarding your organisation – so this tip simply means extending those out to each worker, in each team.
Training
Sometimes, after much haranguing and worrying, you’ll realise that some of your less productive staff aren’t working less hard – they’re working less effectively. In short, they’ve not been trained adequately to perform their work to the best of their abilities. As such, this realisation should always guide you to sharing some training resources with your staff, with the option of bringing in an external training expert to help you build up the skills you’d like to see within your team. Remember that much of a worker’s effectiveness and efficiency in the modern era is centred around their use of technology. As such, ensuring that staff are well-trained in this regard will help them make the most of the software packages at their fingertips.
Peer-to-Peer
Sometimes, as a manager, you get tempted to get involved in all manner of workplace squabbles and issues – and this can result in you losing the time you’d otherwise spend on more important problems within your company. It’s sometimes best to leave certain queries and issues to your workers to sort out amongst themselves. Not only will this reduce your tendency to micro-manage – it’ll also enable your workers to find the independence and autonomy to overcome issues through peer support and feedback.
Teamwork
A continuation of the above point, your team are certainly more likely to band together in the spirit of hard work and camaraderie if they’re fond of working as a unit. For a manager, this means setting up your team with an eye to developing and fostering their teamwork capabilities. It also means finding ways to organize teambuilding weekends, during which your workers undergo some forms of training in order to build those all-important bonds in the workplace. As your team grows stronger, closer and more effective in their work, they’ll deliver a higher quality of work, and they’ll collaborate quicker and more effectively in order to boost your business to the next level.
If you’re looking to progress your company through the re-engagement of your workforce in their roles, you’ll find the above tips useful – helping you to see your profits and productivity grow from month to month.
