Keeping yourself motivated while working from home, especially during challenging times, isn’t always easy. This is why we created our book, Working From Home: The Complete Calmer Guide To Remote Working, and why we collaborate with experts in the field of personal and professional development top provide tips, insights and resources on balancing mental wellbeing with business success. We’ve also launched the Good Mental Health festival to help professionals learn effective ways to nurture their mental health so they can thrive in their work, and all aspects of their life.
This post is written by Jessica Robinson, Founder of blogging platform The Speaking Polymath. Here, Jessica shares 7 steps you can take as a business to motivate your employees, and help boost their productivity while remote working.
Employee engagement matters
In recent months, organisations across the globe have shifted to working from home, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This sudden transition of a remote working culture has left many employers thinking about ways to keep their employees equally productive in a home working environment.
Employee engagement is a technique that can work wonders in helping you to fulfill your endeavor of maintaining an effective workforce, particularly while communicating virtually. Employee engagement helps keep your employees self-motivated to do their work, with utmost sincerity and efficiency, as well as empowering them to work under their own initiative.
7 steps to motivating your team while working from home
In order to achieve consistent employee engagement for your remote working team, here are 7 steps to effective motivation:
1. Remind your employees of your faith in their abilities
In the modern working world, studies have shown that ensuring your employees feel valued is a sure-fire way of increasing their engagement at work. Feeling valued ignites in them a spirit to perform at their best and enhances their productivity, and consistency is key - whether in your 1-2-1 or team meetings, or spontaneously checking in with how they’re doing.
Reminding your employees of your faith in their abilities and belief in them as self-sufficient and capable workers, is a great way to ensure they feel valued. Often, a simple demonstration of faith can motivate your employees to work with a high level of engagement.
2. Keep your employees in high spirits with morning motivation
A lack of motivation is one of the major obstacles for employees when it comes to feeling engaged in work. With this in mind, it is crucial for you to provide them with a powerful dose of motivation every day, and I suggest for this to be in the morning; setting a positive tone for the day ahead.
For this, you may use a number of strategies such as sharing motivational videos with your employees, recording and sending encouraging audio messages, and sharing motivational podcasts. By providing your employees with a dose of motivation, you can set their work spirits high and stimulate them to work with engagement.
3. Initiate conversations in office groups, online or in-person
Research shows that cultivating positive relationships with fellow colleagures can have an impact on how you feel about your work. If employees have positive relationships with each other, their chances of being engaged in their work are far greater. So, it is important to put in some time to nurture a culture of connectedness for your employees, especially when working from home.
One idea is simply to initiate regular conversations in office groups, and assign your employees with some group tasks. If your employees are not able to meet and work physically in person, there are a number of group working apps which can help professionals to engage in collaborative working, such as Slack, Trello, and Asana.
4. Show your employees you appreciate their work
Appreciation is an elixir that empowers your employees with self-confidence, and the spirit to surpass their own performance. As such, having a desire to exceed one’s own performance can further inspire self-development, which in turn can lead to an increase in effective working. Appreciation promotes employee engagement.
Furthermore, there are a number of ways you can show appreciation for your employees hard work, even while working remotely. Sending appreciative messages in the office group and keeping a monthly virtual appreciation ceremony via video conferencing, are a couple of examples. You can also find more inspiration on identifying how your staff like to receive appreciation by taking a read of The 5 Languages of Appreciation In The Workplace by Gary Chapman and Paul White.
5. Organise virtual meet-up sessions
Spending time together, whether work-related or for a social event, establishes a strong emotional connection between you and your employees. It is this emotional connection that can inspire your employees to yield the best results for your organisation, working with dedication and devotion.
No doubt, there are times working from home that can be distracting or disruptive in allowing for team meet-up sessions in-person. However, you can still spend quality time with your employees virtually. For this, you can simply use popular video conferencing apps such as Zoom, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. Aim to arrange regular social gatherings online where you keep the conversations informal in nature.
6. Allow your employees to enjoy flexibility
It is extremely important to encourage your employees to enjoy flexibility while working virtually. Not only does this improve morale, foster a culture of trust and increase engagement, it also acknowledges that your employees’ may have other responsibilities in their home such as caring for their family. With this in mind, this approach to flexible working and the benefits it can yield, shows you’ve considered their need for balance in their working day.
Assigning your employees with work targets and giving them the freedom to complete their work at any time during the day, demonstrates your consideration that everyone has a unique working style. Furthermore, your understanding will in turn enhance your employees’ sense of emotional connection towards your organisation.
7. Avoid micromanaging
Micromanaging is a management style where you closely observe, try to control, or consistently remind your employee of the different tasks to be completed. Micromanagement can create unneccessary stress for your employees and as a result, can negatively impact their confidence, productivity and engagement in their work.
Be mindful of slipping into this management style, especially during challenging times, and instead encourage autonomy with your employees. What’s most important when it comes to motivating your staff, is empowering them to take ownership of their work, encourage openness if they’re struggling, and build trust.
Everyone is different
Employee engagement is a powerful force for good that can keep your employees working in a highly productive state, even during times of challenge, change and/or uncertainty.
When putting the above steps into practice, remember that each person is unique and has individual needs - inspiring a culture of openness, honesty and overall wellbeing can enable you to foster authentic relationships within your team and in addition, lead to high levels of employee engagement from your workforce.
Jessica Robinson is an educational writer, and has penned many motivational blogs for various websites. She spills the magic of her thoughts through her blog The Speaking Polymath. In this blog, she takes the reader on a journey to experience her management proficiency, along with her skill to address matters of global importance.