Once Upon a Dime

Keep Your Employees. Keep them Motivated

Managers and business owners always wanted to have motivated, efficient and productive employees. No one would want to have an employee who cannot meet his quota or fulfill his tasks satisfactorily or someone who doesn’t want to follow company rules and regulations.

It is often a challenge for business administrators and managers to keep their employees motivated. This is because of the fact that you will be at your best if you are highly motivated and interested with what you’re doing.

I have listed below seven of the efforts that I believe, the management should exert to keep their employees motivated.

• Explain the reason for having quotas, responsibilities and policies. Your employees are humans; it is important for them to know the reason behind everything that they need to do instead of just following without knowing why.

• Talk to each one regularly, maybe every quarter to hear what they can say. Your employee may not have problems with his job but may have some concerns that affect his performance at work. In this way, he will feel he and his ideas are important.

• Be assertive. When an employee commits a mistake, listen to both sides first and make a further assessment. As someone with a higher position, you have to be wise in determining which story to believe in and formulate the right action to implement.

• Never scold your employee in front of other employees. It is a fact that every one takes care of his pride and a simple raise in your tone could hurt your employees. Yeah right, everyone’s big now, no one should be a cry baby but shouting at your employee is humiliating him. Getting hurt or mad because of being scolded is unprofessional but humiliating your employees is just the same.

• Give them opportunities for career growth such as trainings for them to learn new ideas, skills and concepts. This is your way of telling your employees there’s a more challenging world ahead of you and you won’t get stuck right where you are right now.

• Apply the concept of Reward and Punishment. Learn how to appreciate and get mad if you have to. Giving a reaction with what your employees do proves that their performance matters. Appreciation will motivate them to do better and punishments teach them what not to do.

• Organize activities that promote camaraderie among your employees. Some time off in a dinner during Christmas or company anniversary wouldn’t hurt. It would be a good motivation to organize something that your employees will look forward to each year.

It is really hard to balance being a manager or owner of the business and a boss to your employees. Both would look the same but each one has different responsibilities which should be performed properly to be able to maintain motivated employees. Bear in mind that you have to keep them motivated; or you could lose your most outstanding, productive and efficient employees.