The key to your business success is having a motivated staff, but motivation can be difficult to cultivate. However, a motivated employee produces increased productivity and collaboration. Therefore, these are a few tips to help you motivate your employees.

Encourage Your Staff To Participate in Corporate Goal Setting

Individuals like to be included, especially when their work or lives will be impacted by decisions made in the company. Therefore, consider including them in your corporate and team goal setting process. As they participate, they buy in because they understand how their job contributes to these goals and they feel as if they have a say in the direction of the company and team. This buy-in motivates them to do what they can to achieve those goals.

Allow Some Autonomy

No one likes a micromanager, and your employees don’t want to be told every detail of what they need to do. Although it is important to share your corporate goals with your staff and show them how their work contributes to the achievement of those goals, they typically enjoy some autonomy in their work.

Some ways to encourage autonomy are allowing employees to spend some time working from home, encouraging your staff to prioritize their own tasks, allowing flexible schedules if you can and making accommodations for their pace of work. However, don’t start every initiative at once. In addition, use these autonomy strategies as rewards for meeting deadlines or making contributions toward company goals.

Build a Culture of Respect

Most people are motivated by respect. When they feel respected and valued, they will do what they can to help. Not only should your staff respect their leaders, but your leaders need to respect their employees, and the employees need to feel respected. Those who feel this way were 55% more engaged and motivated than those who don’t.

If you don’t already have a culture that values its employees, their opinion and their work, start building one. Teach your leadership what it means to respect others and add this characteristic to your corporate values.

Implement Recognition Policies

Your employees need to know that their work matters. Therefore, if they have gone above and beyond, met a deadline or done their job well, give them some recognition. Often, it’s enough to just say “thank you” or tell them they are doing a good job. However, if they have done something that substantially benefits the company or their team, recognize them throughout the company. However, you should always provide positive feedback.

Every employee likes to feel or hear how well they are doing, so consider implementing some of these strategies.