Working from home is a luxury that simply wasn’t available to a lot of people just a couple of decades ago, but that also doesn’t mean that there aren’t any challenges that are involved. If you’re a small business owner that has a team that’s already working for you within the comfort of their own homes, you’re probably already aware of some of them.
Fortunately, there are several ways to motivate your team and get them geared up as they work for you while at home. Are you wondering what some of those strategies are? These are effective ways to motivate your team when working from home.
1. Be Willing to Be Flexible with Work Schedules
One of the main reasons why people like working from home so much is that it gives them the ability to work around their personal lives without having to worry about how they’ll balance family, obligations, and a 9 to 5 job. As long as the work is done on time and efficiently, it shouldn’t matter what time of day it is. So, you need to be willing to be flexible with your employees about when they’re working and be more understanding about their personal lives.
2. Come Up with an Incentive Program
A paycheck should not be the only motivating factor to get productive work from your employees. There are several different incentives that you could try, including extra time off for the employee that produces the most amount of work, or some type of monthly bonus for the employee that has the highest sales.
3. Provide Leadership and Growth Opportunities
Just like in the real workplace, a lot of people like to further their knowledge and skills in order to move up in a company. Providing leadership positions and growth opportunities within your company will not only be motivating to them, but it will help make your company an even stronger one.
4. Give Positive Feedback
Employees like to be told when they’re doing a good job so don’t let those moments pass you by. There may also come a time when you need to talk with an employee about improvements that need to be made but remember to also give them positive feedback about the areas they are doing well in.
5. Allow Room for Failure
When you assign a particular employee a project and tell them to be as creative as possible and pull out all the stops, there’s always the slight chance that it won’t be exactly what you expected. Don’t make the mistake of criticizing that failure, especially in front of others because it will keep them from taking risks and being creative in the future. Your business could suffer because of how you handled that moment.
Instead, allow that failure to be a teaching moment because you’ll probably be amazed at the significant improvement on future projects from that employee later on down the road.
6. Be Up Front and Transparent with Your Employees
Working from home can be isolating, causing some people to feel like they’re not part of the team. So it’s important to keep your employees in the loop about what’s going on in the company and to give them regular feedback about their work. This will help them feel like what they’re doing really matters and that they are an important asset to your company.
Good communication will also keep your employees from having the wrong assumptions about something within your company, which could lead to gossiping along with a negative work environment.
These are several different ways to get your team motivated when working from home. What other strategies have you used to keep your employees on task? Let us know in the comments below.
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