How to Increase Team Motivation and Boost Productivity
Six years ago, when Google was starting Project Aristotle exploring team performances, everyone was absolutely sure of one thing: It’s the “who” that matters most to team success. But as everyone would soon discover, the secret of Google’s success was hidden in mutual respect and equal capabilities for contributing to a conversation. This indicates your business’ bottom line is directly dependent on how well people on your team work together.
How important is motivation to your team?
You can approach the benefits of team motivation from different roads. But, since we talk about company productivity here, let’s take the business-centered direction:
- Commitment promotes the best efforts. Teams who are inspired for work and collaboratio will put their best efforts into your project.
- Hitting goals. From the smallest personal growth objectives to a company’s business missions, people love reaching goals. Motivate your staff by making teams responsible for specific groups of business targets.
- Team learning. Collaborative work nurtures knowledge people gain by hitting business goals together. This helps generate shared expertise within your organization.
How to recognize the most and the least motivated teams
The level of corporate motivation can either make or break your business productivity. There’s a common mistake with team management many business leaders make: taking a one-size-fits-all approach when motivating a team for better achievement. To boost your productivity through team motivation, you have to identify the strong and weak players first.
The best way to estimate motivation level is to participate in team meetings. There are 4 groups that you will most likely single out:
- low competence/low engagement
- high competence/high engagement
- low competence/high engagement
- high engagement/low confidence.
To build a healthy work environment, your task is to convert all teams into the second group – high competence/high engagement. Now, let’s dispel one more popular myth: You can’t take a carrot and stick approach to team motivation. By rewarding the second group, and punishing the rest, you’ll end up with the same result you had at the beginning. Instead, try to focus on the “lacking” elements and creative ways to capitalize on them.
The best ways to motivate your employees and get results
To increase team motivation and boost your business’ bottom line, you can leverage the following strategies:
- Make it challenging. Mundane tasks kill productivity. If your business doesn’t have the capabilities for super diverse tasks and your teams have to work at the same processes every day, you can still encourage creativity. Challenge people to approach the same tasks in different ways to keep attention and interest high.
- Communicate an organizational vision. People perform better if they know the goal posts. Develop a strong organizational vision that defines your business and ensure your team knows what it is.
- Feed newbies fresh opportunities. In many companies, there’s a certain expertise bias, meaning the most challenging tasks are passed to experienced workers. Take a risk to encourage newbies to tackle the hottest opportunities. This helps you avoid problems with low engagement and grow expertise much faster.
- Reward small and big wins. Team recognition is not only an employee retention tool, it’s also a powerful motivational tactic. No matter whether it’s a teeny tiny goal or a serious business achievement, showing your appreciation is vital.
Awards ideas for motivating team members
Among all the ways to improve team motivation, award events represent the most creative category. They make the best players stand out, and awards activities can be used to emphasize which team expertise aspects need improvements. Check out the proven ideas on how to increase your team motivation through awards:
Use an award system to create an award system
Not a typo. A good award system can fuel your team’s productivity. But how do you develop a one-size-fits-all program of bonuses for the whole company? Easy peasy! Launch an award contest during which your staff takes charge of developing internal bonus systems and pick the winning project through internal voting at the end.
Emphasize a team’s weak/strong sides through funny nominations
No words substitute for the fun and hilarity when it comes to team award ceremonies. By switching your creativity on, you can make award events more memorable. For instance, keep in mind, your team should definitely act more decisively presenting project ideas if the manager honors them with the “Corporate Conspiracy Group” title.
Run hackathons
Sometimes the only thing that hinders team spirit is the lack of opportunities for collaborative work in your organization. You can run hackathons to help people destroy psychological barriers they might have due to lack of teamwork experience and let them work on projects of their own choice. A motivation boost will follow, we promise.
How to track motivation organizing award contests
Last, you should ensure awards contests really bring home the bacon for your company by taking team motivation to the moon. To check if it works for you, leverage the following strategies:
- Survey your team. If you use an award management system to set up a corporate contest, pay attention to whether it has survey & analytics modules. The most straightforward way of checking award events success is by asking people about it.
- Keep track of personal initiatives. Monitor if inhouse award events motivate people to build creative initiatives more actively than before.
- Measure team KPIs. Compare team KPIs before and after an award program’s implementation. If you see productivity growth and increased engagement, you’re on the right track.
Conclusion
If your company manages to hit its desired business goals during the year, you understand team motivation importance correctly. By challenging your employees to tackle the hardest tasks first and fall in love with their teams, you substantially increase your business’ bottom line.