How Managers can Motivate Employees

A manager has many duties. Some of the most important ones are to motivate and inspire employees. Only motivated team members will perform at their best and be maximally productive. Here are certain ways how managers can motivate their employees.

Be willing to take time to meet with and listen to employees. Give them as much time as they need or want.
Provide specific feedback about the performance of the employee, the department, and the organization.
Strive to create a work environment that is open, trusting, and fun. Encourage new ideas and initiative. If the culture of the organisation is negative and stiff, why would employees want to work hard if they aren’t enjoying what they do? Not just offering a competitive salary and benefits help people, they genuinely should be able to enjoy working there.
Treat them with respect, just treating your employees like they are intelligent adults can help. Sadly, many corporate motivation campaigns are juvenile and insulting. Showing that all team members are competent, sensible, and trustworthy, can be a powerful motivator itself. This may seem like a no-brainer, but bad management is one of the top reasons employees run for the hills.
Focus on the development of people for employee motivation, Encourage experimentation and taking a reasonable risk to develop employee skills. Get to know them personally. Ask what motivates them. Ask what career objectives they have and are aiming to achieve. Make a performance development plan with each person and make sure you help them carry out the plan.
Being transparent is another important aspect in employee motivation, getting an insight into how business is going makes your employees more invested. Sharing out daily, weekly, or monthly sales reports or even information about how many of your customers are new versus returning. Having access to all this data not only makes your employees feel like they’re an important part of the business, it also helps point out areas where things could be improved.
Offering flexible schedule has also changed the way we work or the way we can work. If employees are able (and expected) to check work email on their phones or finish projects on their laptops at home, it’s reasonable for them to want a similar flexibility from their employers when it comes to scheduling. In order to be viewed as a progressive employer and attract top talent, we should be able to offer various scheduling options to employees like work from home or flex time.

The mentioned factors / points are just a road map / indicators for building a strong and resilient team. However, most importantly, above all else we should treat each other as humans. There should always be a humane factor which is binding us as a team. A leader should not forget that he/she is nothing without the team and vice-versa. It is also very imperative to understand that each one of us has aspirations and dreams which need to be nurtured and controlled. Both the leader and the team should be positively feeding from each other towards a better quality of work life balance which will in-turn help achieving a good and consistent performance.