Employee engagement and employee morale are the harbingers of success in any business model. The idea is straightforward: keep your employees happy and motivated, and hard work and profitability come in the aftermath. The only issue is that most people aren’t self-motivated, and even the naturally ambitious worker can suffer from burnout over time—something that seems to fester and spread to other employees.

Once employees become unmotivated, everything starts to unravel. Teamwork suffers, customer service takes a turn for the worse, and even your company’s reputation can suffer. The only realistic way to solve this problem is to continually motivate your team members.

So whether you’re searching for ways to inspire a floundering team or nip a lack of motivation in the bud before it becomes problematic, here are some team motivation ideas to get the best work out of your employees.

Why Are Team Motivation Ideas Important to Your Business?

Very simply, unmotivated employees create a drain on your resources, finances, and bottom line. You begin to miss important client deadlines, earn an unsavory reputation among customers, and lose market share to your competitors. Nearly every facet of your business takes a nosedive, and pulling your company out of the tailspin isn’t exactly easy.

Shockingly, a Gallup poll reports that only 13% of employees worldwide feel engaged at work. That’s the writing on the wall that you need to be aware of.

However, a proactive approach to team motivation can eliminate these risks altogether while also providing several benefits, including:

• Employee retention: When you consider that the total cost of hiring a new employee is as high as three times their annual salary, retaining employees is the equivalent of increasing revenue.
• Sense of unity: Human nature dictates that everyone wants to feel safe and comfortable, especially in the workplace. The proper team motivation ideas promote these principles through a sense of unity and camaraderie, which can translate into a more cohesive workplace.
• Eagerness for self-development: Although you may have employees that are perfectly fine with their current position and the status quo, others want to advance their careers. Employee motivation directly promotes this thirst for self-improvement, and thus, a more elite, efficient, and productive workforce.
• Increased employee satisfaction: Job satisfaction is an integral part of how employees feel. The more they feel valued, the more they’re motivated. This, in turn, can lead to an employee that takes pride in their work and recommends the product to friends, family, and acquaintances.
• Improved employee engagement: Improved levels of motivation are intrinsically linked to employee engagement. With employee engagement comes not just good work, but great work. Employees are more willing to go the extra mile than just do the bare minimum.
• Excellent company culture: Company culture is the shared set of values and attitudes within a company. Motivation lends itself to a strong company culture, which can help you attract the best talent and foster a connection between teammates.
• Better relationships between management and employees: Micromanaging employees is often one of the biggest reasons employees become unmotivated. By avoiding micromanagement while simultaneously motivating employees, you can create a sense of trust and transparency across different levels of the company.
• Empower employees: Empowered employees are the lifeblood of many small companies, especially if they have to wear several hats. Motivation is an important factor that enables them to complete tasks by using their creativity and innovation, building their critical thinking and problem-solving skills along the way.

7 Team Motivation Ideas for Your Business

With all of the benefits of motivated employees, you can’t afford to ignore team motivation. Fortunately, you have plenty of team motivation options that can apply directly to the type of culture and work environment you want to have in your office. Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling.

1. Team Leadership Retreat: A Break From Routine

Team motivation ideas can boost the morale of employees and foster an admirable company culture, but it’s far from a set-in-stone concept. The same, continuous motivational plans only work for so long until they turn from perks into mundane routines.

But beyond motivational ideas, you have other options. One of those is a leadership or team retreat. During a retreat, your employees get out of the office, engage in team-building activities, focus on leadership development, and learn more about strategic planning and teamwork.

Plus, retreats are fully customizable. You can create a selective, quantifiable company goal that you wish to achieve during the retreat and then put together a streamlined plan to reach it. The facets of team motivation and leadership that you learn at these retreats then follow you back into the office—further increasing the value of the experience.

2. Create an Incentive Program

If you want to promote friendly competition while also providing a motivating factor in day-to-day operations, an incentive or rewards program is a win-win team motivation idea. The key factor is that you have to make the goals measurable and achievable. Don’t make outlandish goals that no one stands a chance of reaching.

Moreover, you can tailor the incentives to your employees’ tastes. Call a team meeting or send out an email to discuss what some great prizes might be. You could try something as simple as a gift card, or something that boosts the well-being of your employees, such as a month of yoga lessons.

With this initiative in place, you can be assured of higher levels of productivity and more motivated teams on a daily basis, while also making your team feel appreciated.

3. Have a Transparent, Open-Door Policy

Although this isn’t a direct reward for employees, transparency via an open-door policy is always a way to breed loyalty, attract top talent, and motivate your employees. When you open the door to your employees, they feel more in tune with the organization’s goals and have more trust between themselves and your leadership or management team.

Transparency also strengthens accountability within your organization. It allows employees to feel like they’re part of the big picture and that their voices are heard. This, in turn, leads to an increase in motivation.

4. Start an Employee of the Month Program

An oldie but a goodie, an employee of the month program may seem outdated, but it’s just as relevant now as it was when it became a popular program almost a decade ago. The employee of the month program can celebrate professional development, outstanding performance, career goals, or milestones.

If you want to take the camaraderie one step further, have a team leader choose the employee of the month. This builds upon transparency and an open-door policy among different subsections of your staff. Even if you have remote teams or remote employees, you can still choose an employee of the month by announcing the award via a collaboration platform such as Slack or on social media.

5. Mentor Your Employees

Employees thrive on becoming a bigger piece of the puzzle that makes a company achieve its goals. That’s why another excellent team motivation idea might be to help guide that person to the next level of professional development through mentoring.

A bonus of mentoring your employees is that you can do it in a way that fits your managerial/leadership style and the extra time that you have. You can conduct one-on-one meetings, spend time teaching or providing advice outside of workspace discussion, or have an employee shadow you. Each will give them some of the insight that you’ve accumulated over your time running a company.

Make sure that you check-in in person with each employee following your mentorship to see how they’re progressing and what you can do to lend continued support.

6. Begin a Volunteering Program

Few things can provide a sense of accomplishment and self-worth like volunteer work. It may not seem like unpaid work would be a solid team motivation idea, but it’s certainly a team-building exercise that promotes teamwork and camaraderie while also boosting the reputation of your business.

To make the activity a bit more interactive and fun, hold a brainstorming session to see how your employees would like to volunteer their time. You could host a toy drive, organize a fundraising event like a softball tournament, or work with an established nonprofit organization.

7. Celebrate a Birthday

Celebrating someone’s birthday may not seem like it would motivate an entire team. But when you show that you care about your employees outside of work, it acts as a catapult to have your employees care about you and your business.

When you celebrate a birthday, you can have a short celebration, keep it low-key with a gift, or meet somewhere in between. It’s amazing how much a simple gesture is one of the best team motivation ideas out there.

Keep Your Team Motivated Regularly

With the aforementioned team motivation ideas, you have exactly what you need to promote employee engagement, work-life balance, and strong company culture. Just remain attentive to changes in morale, work ethic, and results among your employees, and make motivational adjustments as necessary and as regularly as possible. A dynamic leader always gets the most out of his team.

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