Keeping employees motivated is one of the most critical aspects of running a company – if you can’t ensure that your team is consistently delivering their best performance, it will be almost impossible to stay ahead of the competition.
That’s why companies are always looking for ways to boost employee productivity and promote a healthy competitive environment in the workplace. And there are a few proven strategies that have helped companies develop an office culture that’s healthy and productive.
To get you started, here are a few strategies you can start using as soon as today.
Promote healthy conflict resolution
Many companies are afraid of conflict in the workplace because they fear that it will ruin relationships between colleagues and lead to toxic office culture.
However, conflict is an inevitable part of a high-stress environment, especially when decisions need to be made that will determine the company’s success.
That’s why, instead of trying to suppress disagreements, you should instead focus on developing a healthier approach to conflicts so that when they do occur, they help promote innovation and lead to the best resolution possible.
Also, if employees will be afraid to voice their opinions when they disagree with something, that can result in an environment where resentment can grow between colleagues and situations that need resolution may not get addressed.
Whether it’s an argument between departments, or just a couple of colleagues disagreeing about a situation, you need to teach your employees constructive ways of having a discussion that help to move past any situation.
This form of conflict should focus on laying out the arguments of both sides and having a calm and rational discussion, avoiding personal attacks or trying to undermine the other person.
Often, if the conflict is resolved effectively, both sides may be able to let go of the situation and move forward without any detrimental effects to office morale.
One way to go about improving conflict resolution in your office is to look for corporate team building companies that can help choose the right exercises to form better habits of handling various situations where conflicts might arise.
Set clear goals
In order for there to be competition in the workplace, you need to set goals for employees to strive towards. After all, if there’s no way to measure and judge the performance of your team, it will be tough to motivate your employees and get them to stay committed over the entire duration of the project.
While you can get a competitor tracking platform such as Hexowatch for your business processes, it may sometimes be hard to keep track of competition at the workspace.
But setting goals isn’t an easy task – you need to be able to challenge your employees to give their best while also ensuring that the goals remain realistic and accomplishable.
However, there are a few proven strategies that you could use.
One method that works particularly well is measuring employee success based on your recent benchmarks. For instance, you could use a quarterly goal system that tries to make a specific improvement over the results that you achieved last quarter, which can help to ensure that your employees will always need to look for ways to reach bigger goals and won’t become complacent.
By aiming a little higher than the last quarter, you will give the employees a challenging task, and even if they come a bit short, you’re still likely to end up with at least similar results as your last quarter.
Give constructive feedback
One of the biggest crutches for employee dedication and performance is a lack of clear direction and feedback about their performance. If your employees don’t know what’s expected of them and don’t receive feedback about how you rate their efforts, it will be very hard for them to improve and become better at accomplishing the tasks that you give them.
However, by setting up clear expectations and a system for both rewarding great performance and addressing areas that need improvement, you will help your employees to become much more aware of their capabilities and allow them to see what they need to focus on in the immediate future.
It can be challenging to maintain a balance between positive reinforcement and critique. However, both are essential if you want to keep office morale high and motivate your employees to be better.
When giving feedback, it’s important to be delicate with how you deliver it and try to be constructive and encouraging. Try not to focus only on the negatives and find areas of the employee’s work that you can compliment.
The feedback you deliver should be actionable in that you should suggest ways he or she could improve or steps he could take, such as seeking assistance or guidance from a more experienced co-worker or maybe even enrolling in a course to strengthen a particular area of knowledge.
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Create an incentive travel program
In the end, the goals that you set out are only attainable if your employees are willing to give their best to achieve them.
During the months of trying to reach ambitious goals and facing numerous challenges in the process, you need your employees to remain focused and not get bogged down by the work ahead of them.
One way for achieving it that’s been remarkably effective for many companies is an incentive travel program. By rewarding employees that are able to accomplish goals or reach benchmarks, you are sure to create a competitive environment where your staff will push each other to perform to the best of their abilities.
In fact, if you set up a collective reward for reaching a goal, your employees will be much more willing to help each other succeed, which can provide huge benefits for team communication and collaboration.
And while planning even a single incentive journey may seem complicated and expensive, it doesn’t have to be if you follow the right practices.
If you hire an incentive travel agency, it can help you come up with a financial plan for the incentive plan that covers the expenses using profits generated by the increased performance of your employees.
It can also help you choose an exciting location that will keep your employees motivated and ensure that they’re committed to company goals from start to finish.
In Summary
Using these four methods, organisations have a greater chance to engage and keep their employees, by enabling a healthy and competitive workplace.
These four methods are;
- Promote healthy conflict resolution
- Set clear goals
- Give constructive feedback
- Create an incentive travel program
About the Author
Sarah Hill is a content writer at Seven Events Ltd – An event agency in Birmingham offering conference and incentive travel, conference venue finding services, and corporate team building activities. She started her career in the events industry almost a decade ago as time progressed, she became an avid event blogger sharing her insight on corporate event planning, team building, incentive travel etc.
