In an ideal world, we would be able to motivate staff by giving them more money, but it just isn’t sustainable. While some employees might love it, others are best motivated in other ways. Additionally, simply increasing a person’s salary isn’t something that employers are able to do.
Owning a business and hiring employees is never straightforward and financial restraints do exist. This means that offering more money to your employees isn’t always possible, but there are many other ways to motivate your staff. This is where these non-financial tips to motivate staff come in.
Small businesses, in particular, are usually looking for new ways to motivate their staff without spending money. When it comes to motivating your staff, you must first make sure you are meeting basic human needs. You have already given them a stable job and income, so now you need to keep them motivated.
5 non-financial tips to motivate staff
After providing your beloved employees with a sense of reliability, motivation now begins to come from a higher source. This can include things such as a sense of belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. Here are five great non-financial tips to motivate staff, let’s take a look!
1. Make the workplace a fun environment
When taking a look at global companies such as Google, Airbnb, and Facebook, there is one instant similarity. The similarity that is most prominent is that they spend millions creating extremely cool workplaces for their employees. Most companies around the world are beginning to embrace this concept and it is proving to be worthwhile. In particular, these companies realize how important the environment and culture you create for your employees can directly impact motivation and productivity.
While we may not all have the same budget as these companies do, there are other ways to achieve this. Have a good look around your workspace, is it inviting? Is it easy to meet and collaborate in these areas? It is a good idea to take a look with fresh eyes and consider whether or not you would enjoy this space. You may even consider allowing employee input when making these decisions.
2. Use motivating and personal language
When speaking to your employees, try to use motivating language or phrases. It costs nothing at all to genuinely say kind and motivating things to your staff. This includes phrases and words such as:
- Thank you
- Great job
- Keep up the great work
- You can do it
- Stay strong
- Hang in there
- Don’t give up
For even more motivation, you can personalize these phrases by incorporating the employee’s name. This adds a sense of personalization and shows your employee that they’re not just another statistic in your business. This is perhaps one of the most important non-financial tips to motivate staff.
3. Challenge your employees
When it comes to non-financial tips to motivate staff, another great tip is to challenge your employees. The ego is an extremely powerful motivator, and a sense of achievement is a great way to stroke someone’s ego. In fact, it helps to give the ego exactly what it craves which results in motivation. There are many great ways to build a challenging environment that provides your employees with a sense of achievement.
Here are some ways you can challenge your employees:
- Look for opportunities that will stretch and develop your employees
- Send your employees off for training or conferences for the development
- Allow them access to a project that increases their knowledge or expands their role
- Allow them more responsibility
These small additions to your employee’s workload will enable you to build your team’s skills while also providing them with career advancement. Just make sure that your employee knows why you are challenging them and how it benefits them. It is recommended that you do not set them up to fail as stretching them too far could have the opposite effect on them. As a result, this could drastically unmotivate them which is the opposite of what you want.
4. Provide a sense of belonging
It is a well-known fact that humans need to feel like they belong to something far bigger than themselves. Feeling included and part of a team provides humans with a sense of security as well as a sense of purpose. It is crucial that your employees understand where they fit. You should take the time to communicate with your employees about the goals and purpose of your organization.
In particular, make sure that you articulate their role and how it contributes to the team and organization. This will help them see how they fit into the bigger picture. Giving your employees regular feedback is yet another one of the great non-financial tips to motivate staff. This way they are more motivated to reach their desired goals.
5. Offer flexibility
One thing humans love as much as a sense of belonging is flexibility. By providing employees with flexibility, their work can be a compelling motivator. You can do this by giving them a choice as to how and where they perform their work. There is a whole new world of options available today that allow employees to work remotely. Allowing your employees to work somewhere unsupervised offers trust and makes them feel far more valued.
Why you should follow these non-financial tips to motivate staff
These non-financial tips to motivate staff can help you in a large variety of ways. They help you understand the many ways you can help your employees without outlaying large amounts of money for your staff which could land you in debt later on.
If you are already in debt, then companies such as ALC Commercial could help. Just remember, it isn’t one size fits all, so make sure you ask your employees what they want.
