The Gallup Organization has found that only 30% of employees are actively engaged. Twenty-percent of employees are actively disengaged. What do you do with the other fifty-percent? You know, those employees who are only focused on not getting fired; they are usually the people who are doing the absolute bare minimum to get by. For whatever reason, they are not motivated to stand out in your organization.
Why is this a problem?
When disengaged employees are contributing lackluster results, your whole team is affected. Your rock star employees will leave you and move on to greener, more lively pastures, and your company culture’s toxicity levels will increase.
Here are three strategies to motivate the (currently) unmotivated:
Give Power to the People. Stop focusing on performance-based pressure. Empower your team members to achieve their tasks without micromanaging them. Encourage employees to take risks, generate off-the-wall ideas, ask “dumb” questions, and get creative. When given the opportunity to experiment and see their own ideas succeed, your employees will feel excited and motivated to engage more fully with their jobs. This also allows being okay with failure when things don’t go according to plan. Let your employees learn the lesson – and move on.
Walk in their shoes. Tenured managers and leaders sometimes forget what it was like for them when they were just starting out in their career. Take a moment and imagine yourself dealing with the everyday stresses and problems of your frontline team. Consider what would have been helpful for you at the beginning of your career and offer that level of support and guidance to your team. Roll up your sleeves and help out when you can. Your employees will appreciate your support.
Be human. Stop the stuffy corporate mumbo-jumbo. Communicate with transparency and authenticity. Be real and don’t forget to have a sense of humor. Adapt a more casual nature in your conversation and treat team members as equals – no matter where they are on the corporate ladder. Your newer workers and emerging leaders want to be on a peer- level with their leaders. Let them.
Creating a Rockstar workplace culture doesn’t happen by itself. Use these tips to connect with and motivate your employees to higher engagement and performance levels.
