How to Boost Employee Motivation and Team’s Overall Performance

I’m sure you have either experienced it with your colleagues or even with yourself over the past year: some days you just lack motivation for the daily tasks or are just not performing as well as you usually do on your ‘good days’. Especially with the shift to working from home and suddenly either sitting at your desk all by yourself or being interrupted by family and external influences constantly, work can seem a little frustrating. So, how can we overcome these new obstacles and keep ourselves and our employees motivated, and possibly increase the team’s performance?

Learn how to motivate teams from event planning

Events but also lessons learned from events play an important role in understanding what motivates humans and what encourages them to reach for the sky. Our attendees today are not satisfied with content being thrown at them from the stage. Instead, they are having very high expectations for personalization. Therefore, we event planners are no longer organizing events just for the sake of them (not that anybody should have ever done it for this reason only!), but to transform meetings, conferences, and any other event into an experience for the attendee. A personalized experience will have a lasting impact and turn attendees into highly engaged prospects that build a long-lasting relationship with you and your company.

Small = interactive = inclusion

Now, how does this help you motivate your team? Personalized experiences are achieved way harder at large-scale events. Smaller, more intimate groups and events are a growing trend over the past years, with about 80 % of meetings attended by 50 people or less. A smaller group size creates better opportunities for collaborative discussions and active engagement of the audience by including everyone in the process.

Create moments of success

Being heard boosts motivation enormously because it shifts the power to the individual. Employees are given a voice and are no longer a simple tool to accomplish the company’s goals. Sit down with your employee and ask about their own goals to find a way to integrate those in the overall goals and how those might benefit the company as well. Setting small and measurable goals for the employee’s growth and personal development will benefit both sides: the employee feels valued and valuable, while the company keeps a highly motivated, skilled employee who achieves ambitious targets by performing above average. The smaller goals help the employee to experience moments of success on a regular basis which boost his confidence and motivation to reach the next step.

Implement a reward system to boost performance

Sometimes, goals alone don’t motivate to achieve them. Especially when times were tough and motivation is currently lacking, it helps to link these goals to small, consistent rewards to get the team on board. The easiest way to provide a reward is by recognizing your colleagues great work and saying thank you. But don’t just say “well done”; be specific about what exactly was great or how an objective has been achieved. I see it way too often that the management level takes the fulfilment of someone’s job description as granted – and to be honest, why shouldn’t you expect someone to do their job 100 % – but culture has changed and humans strive for recognition. Envy and resentment are a result of our competing work culture in which everyone wants to be the best, but teams perform so much better when wheels intertwine and make the big machine running. When was the last time you acknowledged a colleague’s work?

Celebrate yourself and the team

Remind yourself of what you have achieved and how this contributes to the bigger picture. There is always time to celebrate results and milestones! As I often say and never get tired to remind others: “Business is allowed to be fun.” Maybe create a reward system where employees can collect points for the team, and once a certain amount is reached, they can choose from a range of team activities. This way, employees get another purpose to fulfill their tasks excellently and reach their goals. While contributing to the team’s success, they start motivating each other to reach the goals faster because a fun incentive is awaiting them.

Team building events are fun and insightful

Rewarding the team with a team event benefits the company as well. Team building events do not only help growing teams together, but also highlight skills which an employee may not be able to show in his day-to-day job. How well do you know your team? Maybe there is a hidden skill that could be used well in one of your projects. Find a new opportunity for the employee to showcase his talent, which in turn boosts his confidence of being useful and regarded as the expert in that specific field.

Allow for social gatherings and create them actively

I’m always striving to make my clients’ events as interactive as possible. Make your meetings more interactive and dedicate more time to casual conversation and discussions. Some team’s performance may be low because they forgot how to intertwine their work with others. Out of sight, out of mind. By scheduling interactive meetings on proximity chat platforms – it may only need a 15-minute round of speedy networking or exchange – teams reconnect again from home. At the office, these casual gatherings happen automatically by bumping into each other in the hallway. Working remotely, we need to create these ‘casual happenings’ ourselves. Re-establish coffee kitchen talks and give room for the social drive of us humans to be part of a community. Isolation results in demotivation, social connection boosts motivation enormously.

These easily scheduled chats are also a great way to make sure everyone takes a break. A 15-minute chat group between tasks helps to relax the mind and finish with one task mentally, to be able and start the next task with increased focus.

Make meetings memorable moments

Maybe you have come across the term “festivalization” already. This describes the needs of our current attendees quite well. It talks about the shift from meetings to moments. When we choose event venues, our audience looks for quality space. When we prepare the speakers, our attendees expect flawless audio-visual equipment for excellent transmission. Unique experiences don’t happen at traditional meetings. And when working remotely in an environment where everything battles for the attendee’s attention, we have to be the ones to create gatherings that are worthwhile attending.

The key is motivation on a personal level. To know what each person on your team really cares about, and translate these different interests into one functioning team where everyone understands the other. Team building activities are a great way to help individuals learn something new about themselves, and also to teach them how to combine their talents with the ones of the team for advanced team performance and relationships. And by taking into account each employee’s skills and needs, it will ensure that members of remote teams feel important and valued. Thus, motivating them and giving their best to excel in their performance.

If you would like to learn more about the impact of team building activities and how they can boost the morale of your team, get in touch with me and I’d be happy to share some experience with you.

Have a wonderful day!

Kristin