As a business owner, you should be doing what you can to ensure that your employees are at the top of their game. The better your employees do, the better your business does – which ultimately reflects positively on you. The whole point of being a leader in the industry that you are working in is to do well and be a force of nature for your competitors. The last thing that you need as a business owner is to fail, and if you aren’t motivating your employees and helping them to be the best that they can be, you won’t be a success.
Success is defined in many ways for a business, and if you have a high staff turnover, unsatisfied employees and low staff morale, you’re not going to be a success. It’s going to be up to you to ensure that the people that you hire to work alongside you believe in your company as much as you do. You have an entrepreneurial fire that burns deep within you and it’s your driving force to get your company to the top. Alongside this, you need to have happy staff who believe in the same things that you do. Motivation must be high to get you want you want from your employees and as their leader, that motivation is going to greatly depend on you. Even the best, strongest managers have to think right outside the box. With that in mind, we’ve put together some of the best ways that you can stir up a little passion in your people!
Invest In Them
People love to know that you care about what they want. You don’t just hire a cog for your company, you hire a personality and a person full of passion. Employees have their own goals, their own endgame and their own wants. By offering a personalised development programme and pushing your people to undertake regular training, you are acknowledging with them that their end career may not be with your company necessarily, but that you want them to achieve whatever they want for their future anyway.
It makes you less selfish as an employer if you are concerned about their future. You can mark training days as often as you like with your staff, and for bigger group training you could make it a twice monthly adventure to another venue. There are plenty of places that offer venues for training, give this link a click! Your investment in your people is going to earn you big respect and this will then mean that people WANT to stay with you. A little give and take goes a long way.
Impart Trust
Did you know that you can’t do it all alone? I know, it’s a shock for you as an owner of a company. You cannot physically run the entire business by yourself. If you could, you wouldn’t need the people you’ve spent time hiring and training. You wouldn’t need to rely on the expertise of others to propel your company. Once you understand that you can’t possibly do it all, you are going to be onto a winner. It’s not easy to relinquish control over a company that you have been working solidly on to propel into success, but if you don’t at least let some pieces go you’re going to be swamped.
The hardest part of that is not to be a helicopter employer. You can’t pass over the marketing piece of the puzzle to a manager and their team, only to hover over them and question every decision that they make. You need to let your employees know that you trust their judgement and you trust their decision-making processes. Be open with your praise and try not to question decisions that they have made. They want to do well for you – give them the chance to.
Set Smaller Goals
Goals that your employees work toward need to be achievable, and while there are some big goals (make a million, anyone?), there has to be the smaller goals, too. By setting smaller goals, you’re giving people the taste of success in a way that is easier to reach. When you do this, you build confidence and confident employees work better, harder and for longer. The better they do, the happier they get and the more you can incentivise. There’s nothing better than a weekly handout, praising the staff as a group for the work that they put in for you.
Radiate Positivity
Have you ever worked in an environment where the boss was a miserable, grumpy monster on a Monday morning? That ‘walking on eggshells’ feeling really isn’t nice to cope with and no one wants to have to tiptoe around the office in case they cause undue upset. You are the person who needs to pump positivity through the workplace, and you also need to make sure that you aren’t false about it. Any troubles that your weekend has faced needs to be left at home – your staff do not need to feel anything less than motivated and ready to go and they cannot do that if they are trying to avoid upsetting you.
Be Transparent
When a business is in trouble, often the employees are the last to know. The thing is, if you tell your staff all about the bigger picture for your business and let them know when times are trying, you can all pull together as a business to get it back to its best. Even when your company is doing well, your transparency can really make a difference to the people working for you – they will always appreciate and stay loyal to an honest manager.
You see, employees are the people who are going to make your business the success that you want it to be. If you are making sure that you push your employees to be their best and you are willing to invest in their futures, you’ll have a stronger staff base. Know their worth and you’ll reap the reward.