Enthusiasm and passion are the secrets to a successful team. Even the most skilled employees won’t add much value to the company if they aren’t infused with the drive to succeed. Ensuring that your team members are engaged is one of the most important jobs team leaders and employers have. According to a study by Gallup, 73% of employees who don’t feel engaged with their role are actively seeking new employment. This could mean that the experienced, enthusiastic people you once hired have lost their passion for the job due to a lack of motivation somewhere down the line. Technology is a driving force behind the daily tasks in most workplaces now, so here are some fascinating ways you can use it to drive employee motivation.
Use technology to provide individual performance feedback
It is surprisingly easy to allow 12 months to slip by without providing your staff with the quarterly performance reviews you put in place. Most staff members won’t vocalise the impact that this has on motivation, however, a survey taken by OfficeVibe found that a staggering 98% of employees fail to be engaged with their role when managers give little to no feedback.
Taking simple measures to provide each team member with even 15 minutes of feedback each month can result in individuals that are 30 times more actively engaged. Use technology to put a system in place which will ensure that all employees know when their performance reviews will be, what to expect and what will be discussed in each review. It will become an effective yet efficient way to let your employees know that you appreciate them. Using something as simple as calendar scheduling software, your storage cloud solutions to document the feedback and the internal phone system will work well, but if you want to put new technology in place, most HR software packages will help you with this.
Provide instant feedback on individual projects
Workflow management software has taken off in the last five years, but are you using it effectively? Providing comment on individual projects can help to motivate your staff and engage them in each task effectively.
Let employees use their own technology
The phrase ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’ has never been more appropriate when we talk about smartphones in the workplace. In Britain, the average person is going to check their phone approximately 28 times per day – and like it or not, it is virtually impossible to stop this from happening in the office without enforcing a strict policy. Giving your employees the freedom and flexibility to use their own devices will increase happiness within the workplace and can actually also improve productivity, rather than hinder it.
70% of human resource staff members believe millennials work faster on their own devices, and 60% of staff overall would prefer to use their home devices for work purposes, according to a study by Cisco.
This doesn’t mean that you should allow staff to sit around and private message all day, but perhaps amend the approach to fit in with your place of work. Many workplaces allow marketing teams to use personal tablets, for example.
Make collaborative working simple
Your company is most likely in operation for one purpose; to generate revenue. When trying to generate (and even more likely, increase) this revenue, you will have a number of daily/weekly challenges to overcome. For many workplaces, one of those challenges is a lack of communication or a disjointed team. The challenges that your company face will become much easier to tackle when the workplace acts effectively as one whole operation. A study carried out by BIT.ai found that 97% of employees believe that a lack of collaboration within their team affects tasks and projects. This lack of communication will add to employee disengagement.
Technology such as file sharing and project management tools make it easy for even fully remote workplaces to streamline collaborative working.
File sharing
Using file sharing cloud solutions will make it easier for teams to share large documents and files with one another. Most file sharing solutions also allow for collaborative work on one document, meaning whether an employee is sat next to the colleague they’re working with or if they’re on the other side of the world, collaborative work is possible. File sharing will also prevent problems that arise if a staff member is unexpectedly absent from work and is the only person with access to a particular file.
Workspace social media
A taboo solution for many, workplace social media platforms allow employees to quickly drop private messages to one another. This can streamline workplace performance greatly as simply asking a quick question to an employee in another department, or asking for a file, for example, becomes a task that can be completed in under one minute.
Enable home working
Remote working is gaining popularity fast. In fact, Global Workplace Analytics reports that there has been an increase of 140% in the numbers of people working fully remotely since 2005. To top that, 80% of employees surveyed by Remote.co reported having higher morale when offered the opportunity for even partial remote working.
Systems like VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) can make having remote team members work seamlessly; improving connectivity between employees anywhere in the world. VoIP will mean that your remote employees can stay connected for practical reasons and also to include team members as a part of the office when they are working remotely. When switching to VoIP, choose your service provider carefully as a poorly handled transition can result in downtime and slower productivity.
Overall, a step towards recognising each employee as an individual and invoking a level of flexibility will increase employee engagement, which in turn will increase the productivity of your workforce. Ultimately, technology is a pivotal part of making this easy for all employers.
