Great ideas for recognising staff – which will cost you next to nothing
A frequent question I get asked by managers is: “How can I motivate or incentivise my staff when I have little, or even no money?”
Study after study shows that the top three things employees want in terms of recognition are:
- Support and involvement
- Praise and being valued
- Autonomy
I remember looking at all this evidence and thinking: “Wow! So you’re telling me that the top three things which will motivate my staff won’t cost me a bean?”
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Setting your vision as a manager – a video you might like
As a manager, what kind of vision do you have for the way things are in your team/workplace?
How clear are you about the kinds of behaviours you want to see - and those you don't? How clear are those you work with about what the values and beliefs are in your workplace? When they go home, or they talk about their workplace - what do they say?
More importantly, will they say what you want them to say?
For those who work with me, or who come to my "How to be an Outstanding Manager" programme, you'll know I believe one fo the first things ANY manager needs to do is to get clear about your expectations for your team.
I call it the "How we do things around here" conversation.
Motivational Workplace: Why an MD Missed a Trick to Motivate His People
Creating a Motivational Workplace is Not All About Financial Incentives
A participant at one of my workshops, “How to be an Outstanding Manager”, recently told me this story.
He was a senior finance manager (will keep the organisation confidential), tasked with making savings of £15000 in his department. This was achieved, largely through the creativity and work of two particular individuals.
A few weeks later, the MD was visiting the department on a “flying visit”. The finance manager mentioned these two, and suggested he just spare a couple of minutes in his schedule to personally thank them for their work.
Workplace Motivation: How to Maintain Motivation Through Unsettling Change
As a manager you need to get good not just in managing conflict but at motivating others as well – but never more so than when your staff might be worrying about their jobs, about restructuring or other major changes to their work.
The present business climate is tough, and many businesses are affected by the current downturn. There are three common consequences in businesses when sales and growth slow down. As a manager, you may have experienced any or all three of these:
- Some staff are made redundant, given reduced hours and bonus opportunities are often lost.
- There is increased pressure on all staff to do more.
- Tension, conflict, stress and apathy amongst staff increases, and motivation and engagement often decreases.
If you’re a manager or supervisor, you’ll feel the pressure too – possibly more – because your people’s performance is seen by others as a reflection of your own ability to manage.
It’s an irony that, at a time when you most need your staff to pull together, to be motivated, creative and productive, the environment often produces the exact opposite.
Some managers ride these storms better than others, managing to keep their staff on-side and positive, despite the circumstances.
So how do you increase the engagement and morale of your people, reduce tension and conflict, and increase your chances of hitting targets? Here are three critical things you need to focus on if you want to maintain motivation through a period of intense change.
How to Maintain Workplace Motivation: 3 Key Tips
1. Understand that change causes emotional reactions and notice how your people are reacting.
All change, even changes we choose for ourselves, and which we think of as positive changes, take us through a roller-coaster of emotion. For example, even the presumably happy experience of getting a new job can take you through feelings excitement and celebration, to feeling really nervous about whether you will be successful, to “what on earth have I done, I can’t do this job!” These are all normal, and very common reactions.
When we are faced with changes we haven’t chosen, which outside forces dictate and over which we feel we have little control, such as team restructuring, possible redundancies or new working practices, those emotions can not only be very powerful, they are often very negative. We feel our security and “comfort zone” is threatened, and tension, stress and resistance can be the knee-jerk reaction.
The most successful managers seem to make a point of taking more notice of what’s going on in their team, and how people seem to be reacting to news about change. They know that ignoring signs of discontent, tension or antipathy is likely to allow these negative reactions to become more widespread, and more difficult to deal with.
So, start noticing how your staff are reacting to any proposed or actual changes. Don’t ignore any signs of discontent. Build opportunities for staff to feedback or highlight any issues or concerns they may be having. Once you have a better understanding of how people feel about the changes, you can start to build a strategy for managing the change which will support and encourage staff, and minimise unrest and unease.
2) Increase opportunities for communication
In times of unsettling change you need to keep the channels of communication not only more open, but more regular. At this time, more than others, the risk of gossip, assumptions, and misunderstandings is even greater than normal, and can de-rail any hopes you might have of trying to maintain motivation, focus and performance.
Consider how you can increase opportunities to either meet as a team, or one to one, and allow time to discuss changes, and for people to express their opinions and feelings. It may seem counter-intuitive to allow people to express negative emotions or reactions to change, but actually, research shows time and again, people hate not being listened to far more than change. In many cases, your staff probably realise deep down change is inevitable and actually necessary, but ignoring their views only serves to make them feel de-valued, performance motivation affected. So provide opportunities to allow your staff to have their say, but within a framework which helps to focus on solutions and positive actions.
And think about how you increase this communication too. Wherever possible, face to face always beats any other form of communication when there’s tricky stuff going on. No matter how uncomfortable it might be, wherever possible provide more face to face contact. And a word of caution – be very sparing with the use of e-mail, particularly if you need to communicate something you know might provoke strong reaction. I know you’re busy – and e-mail is a fast and simple way of communicating, but it’s the most easily misconstrued form of communication, and the fallout from a poorly communicated e-mail message will probably end up taking far more of your time and focus than setting up a face to face meeting might have done.
3) Plan a strategy for change
People react to change in different ways. The better you know your staff, the more observant you are about how they are reacting in times of massive change, the more able you are to plan how you are going to handle the situation.
So, for example, you will have the cynics, and the negative activists; you will have those who recognise there may be opportunities or who even champion the changes, and you will have the “fence-sitters” – those who could be swayed either way.
Your prime job is to know where each of your staff sits on the spectrum of emotional reaction – and to consider how you can move as many of them as possible over to feeling more positive than negative and more hopeful than helpless.
For example; how could you utilise your staff who you know are champions of the changes, or who have had positive experiences, to support or influence the cynics or the “fence-sitters”? Which of your team might you need to spend a little more time with? Taking just a little time out to consider how you might plan your approach, can save you time, money and hassle, further down the road, and maintain better employee engagement..
Successful change management to improve workplace motivation is less about managing the physical changes, and far more about managing the very normal, human emotional reactions to change in a way which helps people focus on the positives, and remain engaged, confident and solution focused.
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For more information to help you with the people side of management,
including how to improve employee motivation and get the best out of your team, take a look at these great resources:
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