Motivating Employees in a Startup- Part 2
The success of any
startup is rooted in the level of employee motivation and dedication. It is
difficult to stay afloat if the employees are not following the vision of the
startup. Limited resources and time pose several challenges to businesses.
Startups focus more in making sales by reaching out to customers and hence they
lose the sight of offering motivation to their employees. Several management
techniques can be followed for engaging the employees as well as productivity
at the workplace. In a startup environment, leading a team implies asking them
to serve more than one role beyond the description of job actually offered to
them. Startup owners and managers need to understand that there should be a
balance in appreciation, rewards, fun and recognition of employees while asking
them to take up extra responsibilities and work. These management techniques
promote employee satisfaction and engagement.
§ Personal
Perks
During
new hire orientation, try to incorporate personal preferences survey. Encourage
new hires to fill out questionnaire to know more about their favorite music,
candy, cold and hot beverages, leisure activities and local restaurants. Once
you know that your customer service representative is fond of Starbucks, then
you can consider giving them a gift card during Christmas or their birthday.
This would motivate them to perform well.
§ Measure
their performance
When
you offer published results, it can prove out to be a great motivator. Offering
recognition can make employees feel engaged. Make sure to measure work results
that are tangible such as total weekly sales, production numbers and the number
of customer calls handled on a daily basis. These metrics would offer
motivation so that the employees can give their best performance.
§ Incorporate
fun at workplace
Do
not underestimate the power of fun at work. This will help in de-stressing as
well as offering motivation to the employees. You can consider filling a trophy
cup with candies. You can put it in the department and offer the cup to the
best employee in the department. You can get creative when it comes to offering
incentives for encouraging your employees.
§ Respect
and trust
It
is not easy to build respect and trust. This can prove out to be challenging in
startups if motivation is completely non-existent. Developing respect and trust
requires committing time. You have to make your employees believe that they can
count on you and you should develop an environment where you can count on your
employees. Trust can be built by initiating specialized projects with specified
rewards and absolute deadlines. This will help employees earn the respect of
management. In return, the promised rewards have to be offered to the employees
for meeting the objectives of specialized projects. You need to remember that
every commitment, comment and decision will be judged. This holds true for
employees, co-workers as well as for customers as well. This will form the
basis for them to judge whether you can be trusted or not.
§ Offer
opportunities to learn
Startups
need to understand why large enterprises and multi-nationals need to invest in
learning programs for employees. This acts as a wonderful employee retention
policy and also helps motivating them in addition to skill enhancement. All you
are required to do is to offer them the required opportunities and tools that
would help them accomplish more. The chances are quite high that the staff
would love to take up challenges. Licensing and accreditation programs prove
out to be quite effective in offering motivation and in escalating employee
knowledge. Management education and though leadership offers a deeper
understanding of business as well as improves the attitude of the clients and
company. Offering learning programs and trainings is just not enough. You need
to ensure that employees are able to apply the knowledge that has been acquired
while accomplishing their tasks. Knowledge acquisition has to be worthwhile for
employer and employee or else it would just be wastage of effort and time.
§ Encourage
creativity and innovation
Startups
can suffer greatly in companies where employees shy away from expressing their
creative ideas to the management. Offer opportunities to your employees for
presenting their ideas that can promote improvement of the services or
products. Encourage your employees to exchange their ideas and insightful
information among your departments and employees. This way you are using the
experience of your employees in a wise manner in addition to making them feel
wanted and valued. This would bolster the motivation of your employees as well
as would help in the creation of a flexible environment that is opened to
change.
§ Offer
financial incentives
As
per a survey, pay or compensation tops the list of aspects that promotes job
satisfaction of employees. Money plays a crucial role when it comes in offering
motivation to the employees for boosting productivity. Offer financial
incentives motivate the employees in offering better quality of services as
well as improve the quality of the process. It is crucial to make your
employees realize that benefitting the company can directly benefit them. Offering
monetary incentives can help in enhancing productivity, generating cost savings
ideas, improvement in process, reducing absenteeism and a lot more.
Offering motivation to employees is a
never-ending cycle of engagement, encouragement, recognition and rewards. All
strategies, actions and methods need to be developed by keeping in mind the
above mentioned considerations. You need to connect with your employees and
share words of encouragement on a regular basis. Make your employees feel happy
about the amount of hard work that they are putting in. Move forward by
offering them the opportunities to excel. Make sure to be innovative as well as
genuine while adopting any approach. Make sure to motivate your employees no
matter how small or simple the gesture can be. Value them and make sure that
there is no shortage of opportunities that can help your employees better at
the workplace. If you do not value your employees enough, they will soon start
looking for greener pastures. Hence, startups need to be really careful when it
comes to dealing with their employees.
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