Being a small business owner means you have the opportunity to wear many hats. There is such a variety of jobs to be performed to keep your business running. For a time you will do most if not all of these jobs yourself, but in time you may begin to grow a team around you. Weather subbies or staff, you job as the owner of the business will be to keep them motivated. There are plenty of ways to do this, and we have trialed lots of different options over the years, however a few have stood out as better options.

How To Motivate Your Team

Set KPI’s

In the business world, there is much speak of KPI’s or Key Performance Indicators. In layman’s terms these indicators, are measurements for your team. Most of us are motivated when we know what we need to achieve, many of us will even work to surpass what we need to achieve but we need to have KPI’s in place to measure our performance.

Without KPI’s your team will be lost as they travel through their day. KPI’s will give them a map for their day, allowing your team to be in control of their own day to day plan to achieve what is needed by the business.

Goals

Providing your team with a clear and attainable goal, creates motivation. We had daily, weekly and monthly goals. Goals can be effective when small or large. We would have goals that involved the team working together and individual goals. Sometimes we found that having targets that meant the team working fighting for the same thing, really motivated the whole team.

A little trial and error and you’ll find what works for your business.

Incentive

I haven’t found a team member who wasn’t motivated by an incentive, and they do not need to be financial. Finishing work early on a Friday worked really well for our carpenters, however a site visit worked best for our office staff.

If you have a sales team, financial rewards are super motivating and generally lead to higher levels of conversion. Staff become invested in your business, as they know they are well rewarded for a hard work.

Recognition

We all like to be recognized for our work, if one of your team is working well, see it and say it. Be generous with your praise, not so generous that it looses it’s effect, but do praise often, and fairly.

When a performance outweighs your expectations, tell the team, let everyone know how happy you are, it automatically creates a new benchmark for the others in the team.

Team Building

It is important to get to know your staff. This allows you to understand their individual strengths and weaknesses. Team building activities, give your staff the opportunity to get to know one another, in a non pressure environment.

We would regularly have pizza nights for when we needed to spend time educating, this was a fun way to get our message across to all the team while rewarding and team building.

Why not give them a Friday off in lieu of a challenging mountain climb, or take them to an escape room. There are plenty of options to get your team bonding in a fun way.

In all business, staff are your business. They are responsible for delivering your brand to your clients or customers. Having a motivated strong team, will reward you and your clients and creates a happy work place for all.

What do you love about your boss? What would you like to be improved in your workplace?

Nicole xxx