Want to Motivate Your Employees for Your Startup – Here’s How
Behind every successful startup is a group of dedicated, highly motivated employees and team members that give their all to the company. Besides increasing productivity – and hence the bottom line – motivated workers are the engine that sustains a startup during times of tumult and turbulence, as well as during times of relative calm and ease. On the other side of the equation, groups of unmotivated, or demotivated, employees and workers can cost your startup much in terms of lost opportunities, missed deadlines, and decreased productivity that can all negatively impact your startup’s long term sustainability and ability to stay profitable. Keeping your employees and workers motivated is one of the keys to success for your startup, and fortunately, there are several ways of achieving this.
While employee evaluation is usually a good thing, over-reliance on performance evaluation and feedback that is focused primarily on how best to improve may invoke feelings of trepidation from some groups of workers or employees, which may impact their productivity and motivation. They may start to believe that the employee evaluation process is solely focused on pointing out their shortcomings, instead of recognizing their contributions and hard work to the startup. Recognizing your employees’ achievements and success is one surefire way to keep them motivated and invested in your startup for the long run. The recognition can come in many forms; from a sincere speech that shows how much you appreciate and value their dedication and effort; to an organized company event that rewards them for achieving certain milestones for your startup; or to a raise in their salary. By showing due recognition to your workers and employees for their hard work and effort, you also give your employee evaluation process a more positive and encouraging framework to work from.
Trust is one of the most powerful ingredients in empowering any relationship. The same is true of your relationship with your employees. The more that you are able to interact with your employees in a forthright, honest and open manner, the more trust that you are able to build with them, which in turn keeps them motivated and dedicated. Certain companies and organizations implement an open door policy in order to facilitate the building of trust in which employees and workers are able to directly access their manager or superior to talk things over. By implementing such a policy whereby your door is open to any worker or employee who wishes to address their concerns to you, you are not only just building a bridge of trust, you are also nurturing strong bonds that can fend off employee turnovers.
Nowadays, more and more workers and employees are considering a healthy work-life balance as an important factor in determining which jobs they would take. As the boss or manager of your startup, you should think about how the commute to work, the hours at work, the startup’s work processes and overtime can directly affect the lifestyle, social life, family life and general well-being of your employees. Rigid, inflexible schedules generally don’t do well for an employee’s motivation or work-life balance, so consider offering flexible work schedules. Another thing to consider is to allow your employees to work remotely or from home, which is an increasingly popular choice among companies and organizations. Employees that enjoy a healthy work-life balance will display a stronger fortitude and be more motivated for your startup.
A startup culture that respects their employees’ work-life balance, as well as fostering open communication between all levels of the organization and showing proper recognition for their employees’ achievements and efforts, is a startup that will keep them motivated and sustained for the long run. Motivated workers are a major boon for any business or organization, and the same goes for your startup.
