Wondering how to best motivate your employees? According to Psychology Today, money and benefits don’t top the list of motivating factors. So while fair compensation and benefits matter, it can’t stop there.

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Here are 8 effective ways to motivate employees in 2022 and beyond.

Strategy 1: Set Smaller Goals

Many of us immediately look to lofty goals. It’s easier to think about the end goal and what we ultimately want to achieve than to break our goals down into smaller steps. When looking for a way to motivate employees, you’ll need to help them set smaller milestones.

According to Forbes, businesses that set quarterly performance goals generate 31% greater returns than those set annually. Focusing on smaller goals is the key to achieving more overall. Further, employees who write down their goals are 42% more likely to achieve them.

When thinking about how to motivate your employees as a manager, have employees write down their bigger goals. From there, help them brainstorm steps they can take each day, week, month, and quarter to help them reach those loftier goals (i.e. send out X cold pitches per day/week/month to prospects). As a manager, regularly check in with your employees about the smaller goals and whether they’re being accomplished.

Strategy 2: Incentivize What You Want

Try incentives if you’re looking for ways to motivate employees and increase productivity. Incentives can:

• Boost motivation
• Increase teamwork
• Lower absenteeism
• Increase morale

Incentives are a verified way to motivate employees. To come up with the most effective ones, ask your team what motivates them and think about areas where they can improve. From there, determine your budget and what you can do based on that.

Incentives can include:

• Publicly displayed badges for specific achievements or overall performance
• Rewards such as extra time off, free lunch, a gift card, or preferred parking
• Financial rewards such as profit sharing, bonuses, or commissions

Strategy 3: Give Employees a Purpose

As an organization, you should have a set of core values on which decisions are based. From the C-suite to managers to entry-level employees, everyone needs to know their purpose and how it connects to these values.

When looking for a way to motivate employees, continue to reinforce company values. Clearly show employees how the steps they take each day elevate those values and help your organization accomplish its goals. Importantly, make sure your employees resonate with the organization’s purpose; this should be evaluated before hiring any individual candidate.

Purpose can include improving people's lives, bettering the world we live in, making something easier to accomplish for a particular demographic, or anything in between.

Strategy 4: Show Legitimate Interest in Their Futures

As a manager, it’s your responsibility to have a genuine interest in your employees' futures. Your goal is to build their skill set to be successful even beyond their time at your company. One way to motivate employees is to encourage their continuous growth.

Be a mentor, advocate for your employees, and help your people flourish into more successful versions of themselves.

Strategy 5: Consistently Provide Feedback

If you’re wondering how to motivate your employees as a manager, try providing consistent feedback. This goes hand in hand with being invested in your employees’ futures since feedback is the building block for growth.

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Importantly, feedback should be:

• Timely and consistent
• Honest
• Actionable
• Both positive and constructive
• Motivational

Recognize what your employees are doing well and reinforce that. Similarly, bring to their attention some areas they can improve and give them actionable advice for being better.

Irregular, delayed feedback is useless. As soon as you notice something worthy of feedback, let your employee know, and do so consistently.

Strategy 6: Be Honest

One way to motivate employees is by being honest with them. Just like customers, employees value managers and companies that are transparent.

Be honest about how the company is doing. As a manager, you can provide regular updates on the business’ successes, failures, growth, and future trajectory. Doing this makes employees feel like an essential part of the company’s success and can motivate them even more.

Strategy 7: Offer Flexible Work

Covid-19 shined a light on many parts of society, not least the validity of flexible work. Here are some statistics on flexible work:

• 73% of employees feel that flexible work increased their satisfaction at work
• 77% of employees find flexible working arrangements to be a “major consideration when evaluating future job opportunities”
• 78% of employees found that flexible working arrangements increased their productivity
• 36% of employees are likely to leave their current company due to an absence of flexible work

Companies that do not offer flexible work in today’s world can fall behind. When finalizing ways to motivate employees, try offering flexible work if you aren’t already.

Flexible work can include hybrid work (some days at home, some at the office), going 100% remote, or allowing employees to set their own working hours.

Looking to Hire the Best Talent? Quest Financial Can Help

To properly motivate employees, you need to hire the right ones first.

Quest Financial specializes in direct-hire, contract, temp to perm and project hiring. We’d love to get to know you and help fulfill your employment needs. Learn more today!

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