Ideas to get you and your employees inspired

Happy and hard-working employees will help any business move forward. Inspiring and motivating your employees can happen in a number of ways and can be quite an enjoyable thing to do. Praising your employees and acknowledging their success is a simple but great way to boost morale and productivity. When your employees know that what they are doing is of worth to you, they will be willing to work harder to help your business succeed.

Understanding Your Employees

Understanding your employees happens when you take the time to respond to feedback and constructive criticism. It involves developing relationships and rapport with each of your employees and taking the time to notice their strengths and gently working to improve their weaknesses. You should also know and understand why your employee is working with you and what they are passionate about when it comes to your business. Take the time to work with your employees one on one and within a team setting. It is important to build on the strengths of your employees and place each of them within a role that best utilises their skills to help your company work more efficiently and productively.

Autonomy

Promoting a healthy work-life balance is essential for keeping your employees motivated and inspired. Encouraging employees to be independent within the structure of the organisation means that they also feel they have the right to speak up when things aren’t working. Giving employees autonomy enables them to work within the team structure but with enough freedom to make decisions.

Recognise and Reward

Praising the skills and ideas that your employees bring is one of the best ways to recognise and reward. Rewarding your employees can happen in a number of ways from a pay rise or promotion, to establishing the plans and the hopes that your employee has for their professional development and working with them to make it happen.

Creating a Beautiful Environment

Creating a beautiful environment helps to boost employee productivity and makes coming into work highly enjoyable. Creating a beautiful environment can happen physically and aesthetically, and/or emotionally and mentally. One suggestion is having beautiful décor and creating a rest area where employees can take time to sit down, debrief, relax and rest whilst they are on their lunchbreak. Creating a beautiful environment can also occur through staff meetings where employees have the chance to raise concerns, feedback and personal successes. Having a healthy team environment encourages higher work ethics and helps employees to grow and flourish.

Creating Goals

Creating goals are crucial for any business to move ahead and can be set for an individual, team or the company as a whole. Goals motivate employees because they provide a target to work towards. Goals deliver a clear structure and vision for where the business is heading and enables employees to recognise what is needed to ensure each target is met.

Asking for Feedback

Asking for feedback shows that you value your employees and what they have to say. This in turn demonstrates that you as a leader care about your employees and what they have to offer. Asking for feedback can happen with an individual during a conversation, in a staff meeting, via an anonymous survey or even via a feedback box. Asking for feedback and welcoming constructive criticism is a must if you want your business to move forward.

Upskilling

Upskilling involves working with your employees and teaching them new skills. Upskilling can take place via personal development courses, webinars, training days or by pairing your staff with an experienced mentor. Upskilling builds on employee strengths and helps to develop employee weaknesses.

Building Trust

Building trust within a workplace empowers employees to collaborate effectively with their team and management. You can start to build trust in many ways and whilst you do so it is important to listen more than you speak. Listening to an employee and truly taking on board what they say is a great first step to building trust, respect and rapport.

A trustworthy leader:

• Acts on the feedback they are given
• Is willing to accept and work on their own weaknesses
• Is consistent with what they say and do
• Gives employees appreciation when it is due
• Is attentive to nonverbal cues
• Is inclusive and does not single out one employee over another

How to Inspire Your Employees

When you inspire your employees, you are paving the way for stronger work ethics, freedom to have ideas and an overall boost in workplace morale. You can often inspire employees simply by being present. Make yourself available to spend time with your team so that you know who contributes what to the business. Employees feel inspired when they are noticed and validated. Taking time as a leader to get to know your team will inspire those around you to follow and trust your leadership. Inspiring employees happens when you get to know them, their attitudes, their behaviours and their values.

Inspiring your employees also involves making it clear that your mission goes beyond simply selling a product. Employees need to know that what they do matters and if you can show them that what they do contributes to a better society at large, that’s inspiring! Another way to inspire your employees is to work alongside them to get projects done. Rather than just standing in a leadership role and expecting your employees to do all the work, provide them with advice, guidance and the resources needed to accomplish their goals and tasks.

How do Skill Based Plans Motivate Employees?

Skill-based learning helps employees to become independent and more confident within their role. Skill based plans empower employees to capitalise on their strengths and develop skills in areas that they are passionate about and have a preliminary understanding of. They also encourage an employee to take their skillset to the next level.  Skill based plans focus on the strengths of the employees and equip them with additional skills to make a difference within the business.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Employees

Getting the most out of your employees involves treating everyone with respect, developing rapport and providing opportunities to upskill. You must value each of your employees and understand what they contribute to your company. Getting the most out of your employees involves recognising their strengths and working with them individually and collaboratively to accentuate such skills. To get the most out of your employees you should have a business strategy in place that works with the strengths of all your employees.

Motivating and inspiring your employees is essential when you are running a business and can be done in many different shapes and forms. Building trust, respect, rapport, communication, personal growth and providing opportunities for personal and professional development are just some of the basic foundations required to motivate and inspire your employees.