If you’re an Employer, Manager or Supervisor in Ireland, when did you last take the time to assess your employee job satisfaction levels? Have you looked at what working at your company is like from the perspective of an employee? Are your staff motivated and striving for more or are they just working for their salary and nothing more? What more could you do to boost your employees to work that bit more productively and efficiently and help them feel motivated and appreciated?
Here are some thoughts and tips: –
- Be open and clear about the company vision. Do employees know and understand the plans and objectives for the next 2, 5, 10 years? Encourage communication and conversation across all levels. Ensure that staff feel they’re able to give feedback, make suggestions or ask questions.
- Your team is a group of individuals with differing personalities who all work in different ways and have different inspirations. What motivates some, might not interest others in the slightest. Appreciate the diversity and use this to your advantage.
- Offer clear career paths for those that are keen on progression; encourage development aspirations. On the flip side, be mindful that there are those who are perfectly happy with the role they’re in now, and that’s ok. All still need to be engaged and motivated.
- Encourage all staff to undertake CPD. Training and development can keep staff engaged and motivated as their knowledge and skillset grows and gives them a renewed focus on their job.
- Allow staff to thrive with trust, responsibility and autonomy.
- Create a collaborative and teamwork environment. A positive environment can help to keep staff morale up.
- Offer a bit of flexibility to your staff. It can be hard to fit in all the personal life commitments such as bank appointments, appliance deliveries, handyman appointments etc. around the 9 to 5 working day. Giving staff reasonable time to sort things like this will increase loyalty, appreciation and morale.
- Make sure you set time aside to speak to employees on a one-to-one basis wherever possible. You’ll garner much more feedback and insight from a personal conversation.
- Incentivise and reward staff – whether with bonus schemes, birthday holidays, social gatherings or Friday afternoon chocolate bars, the perks an employee receives sometimes makes all the difference. But, don’t forget the basics, a simple thank you or congratulations can go a long way.
- Finally, lead as you wish others to follow.
We appreciate that some of these tips aren’t practical if you’re the head of an organisation which employs hundreds or thousands of people, but the principles can be followed and filtered down through the management structure and still show a positive impact.
For information on our Management Training, click here, or to view the full range of training available for your staff, click here.
