When running your own company, it is easy to self-motivate. You are inextricably linked to every success and every failure the company has, so you know full well that it is paramount that you are motivated to ensure that you are linked to more successes than failures. Your employees however, are not linked to the company’s results in the same way. They can clock in at nine in the morning, clock out at five in the evening, and essentially to get away with doing the bare minimum amount of work in the hours in between.

So how can you motivate your employees to make more of an effort in the office? How can you ensure that your employees are working with the company’s best interests in mind?

Below is a list of way you can motivate your employees in the workplace.

Set weekly goals for each employee

Be it a sales target; a certain amount of article views; or a certain number of new clients acquired for the business, ensure that you set each individual employee unique goals for each week. Having a target to work towards will give employees more of an incentive to make an effort to achieve personal goals every week. A great way of ensuring maximum effort is to give awards to those who hit all of their targets for a month. Perhaps hand out an “employee of the month” award, or give a small monetary bonus to people who reach all of their set goals.

Gain employee trust through transparency

Set up a weekly meeting with employees to discuss the business. Be transparent in these meetings. Let your employees know exactly how the business is doing, and how it can be improved over the coming weeks. By discussing company details with your employees, you will not only gain the trust of your employees, but also make them feel more attached to the successes and failures of the business.

Build in-office relations through team building exercises

Ensure that your employees do not dread coming to the workplace, and create an environment which people enjoy working in by building in office relations. A great way of doing this is through team building games for coworkers. Fun team building exercises such as pub quizzes, paintball, and blind retriever are all effective ways to create friendships bonds within the office, and make the office an enjoyable place for employees to be.

Give individual feedback to your employees

Monthly individual meetings, can be an effective means of communicating to employees the ways in which they can improve their output at the company. Communicate to your employees the tasks you feel that they have excelled in, and the tasks which they can improve at. This will give each person in the office an incentive to do improve their work at the company, in order to ensure that they will receive praise during their next individual meeting.  

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