If your employees are not meeting their goals, they may be lacking motivation. If you are looking for new team motivation ideas, we have compiled a few here.

Our ideas focus on the following concepts. 

• Do you appeal to each employee’s sense of purpose?
• Are you improving motivation through communication?
• Is your promotion and rewards program meeting employee expectations?

Do you appeal to each employee’s sense of purpose?

Employees want to know that what they do every day is making a difference. Many team members appreciate having a job. They appreciate receiving a paycheck.

But what really drives them to do their best is their sense of purpose. This sense of purpose varies across the workforce.

You can gain insight into your employees by asking them to take a psychometric assessment. The results from assessment platforms such as TeamTrait indicate what motivates each individual.

As you assign work tasks and special projects, you'll identify goals for your employees to reach. When you connect these goals to an employee's sense of purpose, their team motivation increases.

Are you improving motivation through communication?

Many organizations use the first month of the calendar year to develop and set an agenda. You might be working together to establish sales goals. Or you could be setting out the research advances you’d like the team to achieve.

In the weeks immediately following kickoff meetings, team members are energized. Team motivation is high.

But inevitably, problems arise. A glitch in a report proves difficult to fix. One of your employees may be consistently missing deadlines.

Managers should watch for and be prepared to address these kinds of problems. Regular communication with each member of your team and with the entire group is a must. This communication can happen through meetings.

One-​on-​One Meetings

Each team member has a preferred style of communication. You can understand their style by studying assessments results. Chatting about their weekend activities before delving into work issues puts some people at ease. Other people are all business.

Establishing the right communication vibe in your one-​on-​one meetings matters, especially when it’s time to discuss performance problems.

Team Meetings

Few people appreciate more meetings. But these events can improve team motivation. These settings serve as the perfect opportunity for managers to praise each member publicly for their efforts and results.

You can also use team meetings to keep employees up to date on what’s happening in the organization. When everyone hears breaking news all at once, they feel they are being treated as equals. The group meeting is the perfect venue to remind everyone about how their work ties to company goals.

Team meetings are also your chance to be transparent. Not every project will go well. When you report the truth, stay upbeat. Ask for ideas about a new direction that could be taken, and employees will come up with creative thinking.

Is your promotion and rewards program meeting employee expectations?

While team motivation remains a key goal for managers, the groundwork is set at the individual employee level. Employees need regular assurance that they are doing great work. Rewards help. Team members also should be able to see a career path, according to Robert Half analysts.

Promotions

Few employees are content to do the same job year after year. With the pace of technological changes currently taking place, their job may not be recognizable five years from now.

Your employees likely sense these changes. Instead of letting them silently worry about how AI or another technology will impact their future, address the issue.

In your one-​on-​one meetings with employees, review their career goals. You may not be able to offer them exactly the promotion they want. However, you can assign them to projects that will expand their knowledge and their skills.

Rewards

While you may regularly praise employees in team meetings, that acknowledgement may not be enough to motivate them. Take the next step and provide a tangible reward.

Some employees will be thrilled to get an extra day off with pay. Based on assessment results, you may decide that another employee’s dream reward is attending a conference. Following the event, they can present their knowledge during a lunch-​and-​learn session.

Actively Manage Team Motivation 

The best way to optimize motivation is to actively manage to individual and team goals. Communicating regularly and transparently will build trust with your team members. Appealing to their sense of purpose, giving rewards and developing a career path matter too.

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