Motivating your team

There is a lot of talk about reward and recognition and in the current economic climate, there is more pressure to increase salaries. However, as a small business, it isn’t easy or sometimes possible to increase someone’s salary, especially in the current climate.

What else can you do to keep your team motivated? Are you clear about what your values are and what behaviours you want to recognise in your team?

1. Providing and acting on feedback.

You can look to undertake a pulse survey, but make sure you also build in the time to action the feedback. Feedback can also come from colleagues, and customers – consider how you can collate it and then use it.

2. Recognition

It is imperative that recognition is given in real-time. The association between contribution and recognition weakens over time. Ideally, recognition should be given as soon as possible to produce a clear connection to positive behaviour,

3. Opportunities for learning and development

Creating a culture of learning will keep your team motivated as they look forward to trying out new skills and taking on new responsibilities. Encourage your leaders and peers to recognise and reward team members for their learning and development accomplishments.

4. Collaborating

You have talented, motivated, and creative employees, but they can’t reach their full potential without the help of their fellow team members. Make sure that everyone recognises and encourages great collaboration whenever it happens.

5 Live and breathe your culture

Your culture is created by the values, expectations, and practices in your business. It’s what makes your company unique, successful, and a great place to work. Your culture needs to be more than a few inspirational terms —  they need to be brought alive, and your team should live it through consistent, authentic behaviours. So when team members engage in the actions that you want to define your culture, recognise them for it.

6. Growing from your mistakes

Mistakes happen, we are only human. It can be tough and some mistakes are more huge than others, but if you don’t confront errors head on, the likelihood is they will be repeated. Have a constructive and productive conversation to ascertain how it happened, how as a business you will deal with the impact and how you can prevent a similar error from happening again.

7. Reliability

When the next challenge arises, recognise your team and their reliability and resilience when dealing with it. Talk through the challenge and acknowledge it, and discuss their concerns. This will help to build mutual trust and respect and they will know you recognise their efforts through these tough times.

Above are some key elements to consider when motivating your team, and other strands can be pulled in when you develop an overarching reward and recognition programme. If you would like to discuss this in more detail or how you can implement a programme in your business please give me a call.