People spend one-third of their lives at work. If your employees are dreading heading to the office every day or doing work from home, their overall well-being can be hugely affected — not to mention they’ll be less than enthused about the actual work they’re doing. If you want to motivate employees and help them look forward to work, here are a few simple things you can do.
1. Spruce up the office space
The office environment can affect your employee’s overall health, motivation to work, and desire to stay with your company. Workers are looking for attractive offices with added benefits, such as wellness rooms or flexible seating. If your office hasn’t been changed in 30 years, it’s time for an upgrade. Something as simple as adding a cheap canvas can make a huge difference in the look of your office. Canvas art brightens up the walls and adds personality to your office, and it won’t cost you much to make this change. Adding flexible seating will encourage your team members to work together when it would benefit the project. Adding plants and filtering the air can help your employees stay healthy at work by improving the air quality. Providing fruits and veggies in the break room will encourage team members to choose a healthy snack when they’re feeling sluggish.
Your employees will appreciate your attentiveness to the office space and your efforts to make it a great place for them to work. If your team members work from home, why not send them cheap canvas prints in the mail? Giving them something for their home office shows that you care about their work environment, even when you don’t have an office.
2. Give them clear goals
Goals help employees stay focused and working towards an achievement. When they have clear goals, they know exactly what they’re meant to do and they’re motivated to reach their objectives. With Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, you and your team members can work on goal setting and reaching new heights as a company. OKRs are the best way to provide goals to your staff because they’re clear and efficient. The OKR process is easy to follow, and during performance reviews, you can go over what’s working and what isn’t. Whether you’re setting company OKRs or individual ones, the idea is the same. Identify an objective to work towards. Once you feel satisfied that your objective is achievable (though a stretch goal is encouraged), you’ll identify the key results that will get you to that goal. These key results are numerically-defined and will help you know if you’ve met your objective or not. Having individual OKRs and company-wide ones will help you and your team members be motivated to work towards new accomplishments. Your employees will come to work excited to tackle their goals.
3. Listen to your team members
This is the simplest strategy of all. Just listening to your employees can make them excited for work and feel valued. Give your staff the space to talk about their issues and concerns. Encourage questions and collaboration. When your employees feel like they’re important members of the team whose ideas or concerns will be heard, they will be excited to come to work. A crucial aspect of listening is following through with what they say. If an employee voices his uneasiness about how a coworker is acting, it’s your job to listen to the concerns and follow up with both team members. Show your staff that you’ll hear what they have to say, and act on their ideas or worries.
When your employees are excited about work, they feel happier and healthier. Your company also benefits from enthusiastic team members as everyone works together to crush goals. With a few small changes, you can have a productive business with amazing staff.