5 Effective Ways to Motivate Remote Staff

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This pandemic has turned all aspects of business and life completely on their heads. A tough time of Covid-19 has brought employees who feel anxious about the dearest ones working in high-risk jobs enough as it is, to juggle remote work and children’s schooling. Hiring freezes pressure and uncertainty around a job adds to the chaos, lowering team morale and scaling employee motivation back.

For people surviving layoffs or deciding to change careers the good news is federals are still hiring, and this is how to write a resume for a federal job. Companies interested in handling fluctuations in the workforce tend to invest in their employees, support them and keep the work environment safe for high team morale, productivity, and engagement.

Happy and productive workers positively impact profits, maximizing company growth. Capability practices show that while satisfied employees achieve a productive output of 100%, engaged employees will perform 144%, and inspired employees can improve a productivity rate of 225%. It’s difficult to make everyone happy during the pandemic but it’s easy to motivate your remote staff and inspire with the help of the following effective management practices.

#1. Asking for Feedback

Open communication and transparency are vital for executives to bring strong company culture and turn the company into a greater place of thriving and success. Working without being ever asked an opinion about a topic makes an employee feel unsupported or unable to become a part of the team. Collecting feedback troubleshoots and resolves issues before they escalate into something bigger causing talent to leave.

Be visible and approachable and this simple strategy of regular communication will prevent conflicts from happening, leaving a long-lasting positive impression. Just be curious about how your employees feel, and you’ll get a higher probability of coming to work early or staying later to finish a project. A transformation from feeling a lack of recognition or appreciation to being valued and heard will be really miraculous. Your task is to remain open to change and improvement.

#2. Letting Employees Know You Care

Being cared for has a profound effect on emotional state, mental health, and general motivation. Caring in the workplace improves not only working experience and employee productivity, but also brand reputation, retention of talent, and organizational progress. As your team consists of people, driven by human emotions, when they feel cared for, they will give back, the more they are invested, the more they would also care.

After listening to their feedback, provide employees options and alternatives with choosing the format they desire to work in and allow them to make decisions on their behalf freely. That also means the company shouldn’t question why a worker asks for taking time off or whether a project will get finished. It’s a matter of trust to let outcomes and actions speak for employees themselves. If people know executives care, there will be no reason to look for another job opportunity.

#3. Giving the Freedom of Choice

Autonomy leads to better productivity, as it makes employees feel fulfillment at work, especially when the work is complex or requires more creativity. In a very routine job, autonomy doesn’t have much impact on productivity, but it still increases satisfaction, which leads to other positive outcomes. In terms of neurologic research, freedom maximizes brain power and mental processing.

Potential benefits of taking away the feeling of being controlled or watched include greater employee commitment, better performance, improved productivity, and lower turnover. A little freedom at choosing time and place for work, defining and solving problems, or setting individual and company goals can have a big impact on how employees feel about their job and the company. Reviewing the role of managers as coaches who guide, suggest, and provide structure for the team, instead of authoritarians, can aid productivity as well.

#4. No Telling Off in Front of Everyone

The keystone of management is “Praise in public, critique in private”. Public critique is unkind, never improves performance, and harms the one giving it. If you critique your people in public, you break their trust. People will never forget how you made them feel, and you lose your ability to affect the performance by lowering morale. Whereas, the team will take great delight in returning the favor and completely lose motivation for progress.

Needless to say, for an influential leader giving feedback is a must, but everyone should get it right. Praising a team member in public guarantees a collective boost in team morale and creates a sense of security appealing to foundational needs. But publicly reprimanding people doesn’t work for employees, and it’s horrible for the boss. Choose a convenient time and suitable setting one on one for a difficult conversation and give feedback about operating results and proper changes to be done. This format facilitates trust, allows relationship building, and promotes safety to discuss different factors that may also be weighing in on an employee’s performance.

#5. Providing Learning & Professional Development

Investing in constant learning and ongoing training improves the professional thinking and performance of employees. Professional development promotes higher employee retention rates and signals competency on behalf of the employer. Employees engaged in professional development feel more confident knowing they own the skills required to succeed in their line of work. Those, who know about the perspective of getting promoted to a higher, more lucrative position, will work harder if motivated.

Professional development means workers’ readiness for challenges if the company adopts a new strategy, expands, or needs change. During the pandemic, businesses should consider investing resources into flexible formats of online learning, refresher courses, and training sessions. Major of your staffers eagerly pursue professional development to bolster their confidence in what they do at work. This confidence translates into higher overall job satisfaction, increasing performance, productivity, and morale.