How do you motivate your employees?

According to recent statistics compiled by Gallup, just 33 percent of all employees in the United States are actively engaged in their jobs. The cost of disengagement from this activity is significant, which is unfortunate for firms. It is estimated that each year, reduced productivity results in a loss of between $960 billion and $1.2 trillion in wasted money.

You, as a manager, are probably well aware of the bad impacts that come about as a result of workers who are not interested in their work. What you may not know, however, is how to increase employee engagement in such a way that the people you supervise feel involved in their job and are given the authority to not only meet but also exceed expectations.

The ability of managers to effectively communicate with their direct reports is one of the most powerful tools they have for boosting the motivation of their direct reports. In the next section, we provide managers with some pointers on how to keep their staff engaged and working for the common strategic objectives of your firm.

5 Suggestions to Keep Your Employees Motivated

1. Recognize a work well done.

It doesn't take much to convey a word of encouragement to one's workforce in order to boost morale and productivity. A seemingly little gesture, such as congratulating individuals of your team for their excellent performance, may have a significant and positive effect on the morale of your workforce.

The psychological reasoning for this is quite clear: providing your staff with positive feedback makes them feel appreciated in their employment. When a person believes that they are appreciated, it encourages them to continue to perform to the best of their abilities. According to the data, they also have a lower likelihood of quitting their present employment during the following calendar year.

2. Make it possible for your staff members to exercise a reasonable amount of independence.

According to the findings of several studies, people who report higher levels of job-related happiness also report experiencing greater degrees of autonomy in their employment. To be more specific, increasing flexibility regarding the location of work (office vs home setting), schedule, tempo of work, and sequence in which activities are accomplished all led to better levels of satisfaction among employees.

Beginning the process of integrating autonomy into the workflows of your business should be done gradually if you are unclear how to get started. You don't have to make a sudden transition from one extreme (workers who are completely reliant on you) to the other extreme ("independent" personnel). There are, however, certain tactics that are quite simple to put into action that you can utilize to grant greater autonomy to your staff in their job.

As an example, as a reward for reaching individual or corporate objectives, you might provide workers with additional leeway over their work schedule and the location of their place of employment (for instance, giving them the option to work from home or in the office). Alternately, you might change your management style such that you oversee important milestones but offer your staff the freedom they want to carry out the activities that are necessary to get there. This would include adjusting your management style.

3. Include your staff in the process of defining goals.

BlessingWhite Research asked respondents to choose the item that "would most enhance their performance" in their Employee Engagement Research Update. BlessingWhite Research's findings may be seen here. Twenty percent of all respondents, including roughly a third of employees who were not interested in their job, selected "more clarity about what the business requires me to accomplish and why" as their top response.

This data demonstrates why defining goals is such an important activity, and why it should include the participation of your workers at every stage of the process, rather than being done just by management in a vacuum. When workers are aware of the objectives of the organization, it is much simpler for them to comprehend the ways in which their activities may immediately contribute to the achievement of those objectives.

According to the findings of the research, this alignment has the potential to have a beneficial impact on the engagement and motivation of employees:

It states that "Increasingly, we find that a key to developing engagement in most organizations is an emphasis on alignment," and this is something that they have discovered. "Never make the assumption that staff members know what the organization requires and are able to align to those requirements."

4. Facilitate relationships based on mutual respect.

When it comes to many other types of relationships, including those between managers and their staff, respect is a potent motivator.

A survey of 20,000 working professionals found that employees ranked "the ability to demonstrate respect" as the most important leadership behavior. Furthermore, employees who reported feeling respected by leadership were 55% more engaged in their work than employees who did not feel respected by leadership.

Sadly, though, fifty-four percent of respondents said that they do not routinely feel valued by their organization's leadership. This is problematic for many businesses. It is so abundantly evident that showing respect for one's staff members, despite the fact that doing so requires just a little amount of effort on one's part, is not only polite but also sound business practice. Whether you are having a one-on-one conversation with an employee, communicating with them through email, providing them with feedback, or mediating a dispute, you should do everything you can to promote courteous interaction.

5. Give your method for evaluating performance some serious thought.

Performance reviews are one of the most frequent techniques that companies and management use to gauge the effectiveness of their employees. Approximately 91 percent of enterprises embrace some type of formal review procedure. In principle, these evaluations make it possible for management to signal how well an employee is meeting expectations, making progress toward their objectives, and contributing to the success of the business. This is done in an effort to boost engagement and push the employee to work more effectively.

Sadly, the theory does not always correspond to what happens in practice. Only 14% of workers "strongly agree" that the performance reports they get motivate them to develop, according to a research that was carried out by Gallup.

There are actions that may be taken to enhance the process if you are worried that the performance evaluations you conduct do not have the positive effect that you would expect them to have. You could, for instance, switch from annual reviews to reviews every six months or quarterly in order to make the feedback of your employees more actionable. Alternatively, you could adopt a more individualized scoring system in order to take into account the specific requirements and responsibilities of each individual employee.

Clear Communication Is Required in Order to Motivate Employees

There are very few abilities that are more valuable to have in management than the capacity to communicate clearly and effectively with one's workers and other members of the team. In point of fact, effective communication is the key to success for each of the recommendations that were presented above:

It is essential to effectively communicate gratitude and value when recognizing an employee's performance when they reach or surpass expectations.

In order to facilitate a more independent working style among your staff members, you will need to successfully assign responsibilities and express your expectations in a clear and concise manner.

If you want to include your workers in the goal-setting process, you need to be able to convey what may be a complicated set of strategic objectives in a manner that can be understood by those who are not executive level personnel.

Understanding the many levels of social and professional etiquette is necessary if you want to cultivate polite relationships with the members of your workforce.

To conduct an efficient assessment of the performance of your employees, you need to be explicit in the expectations you have for them and also collaborative in the process of determining objectives and potential avenues for growth.

It is essential for you to completely develop your communication skills in order to effectively manage your staff and workers if you are in a leadership or management position within your firm. To become an excellent communicator, practice and consistency are the essential; nevertheless, it is possible to get a head start on your professional growth in this area as well. Just like with any other ability, practice and consistency are the important. For instance, if you want to have a prosperous job, getting a graduate degree in communication may help you establish the groundwork for that achievement.