Managing a remote workforce may be a new skill your company has mastered, but maintaining productivity is an altogether new challenge. A key aspect of boosting productivity levels is keeping a motivated workforce. When you find ways to effectively motivate your remote employees, they will respond in kind with quality work and productive processes.
In order to keep your workforce motivated, you must think outside the box. Simply making the effort can communicate your desires for their well-being; but you must go further to create meaningful experiences and benefits for these key workers. MHO offers these creative tips to keep your remote workforce motivated in 2021 and beyond.
Workforce Motivation Pre-2020
Before the pandemic radically transformed how businesses accomplish their work, driving many of the workforce away from the office and into forced isolation at home, key motivating factors related to social interaction. Company events, break room chatter, collaborative problem-solving, and even attending happy hour together after work built a sense of camaraderie among workmates.
Now, much of that has vanished. Many workers now perform isolated tasks in isolated settings where, at best, they only see co-workers on a video screen for short meetings. Social banter, encouragement, and cooperative work has largely vanished. Remote workers feel less a part of the team, less valued, and more taken for granted.
A Strategy to Motivate Your Remote Employees
Building and maintaining a motivated workforce requires a strategy — nothing good happens at random or by chance. Keep your workforce motivated for better productivity by focusing efforts on their needs. More than a mere paycheck, workers seek significance from their work and career experience.
By building a strategy to address the top three factors that provide this significance, you will maintain a highly motivated workforce that values their role in your company. Highly motivated workers consistently perform over and above what is expected of them, pushing your company to greater heights. Here is a suggested outline and some ideas for this strategy.
Develop Their Potential
Constant improvement is key to ongoing success, for your company and your employees. Show how much you value your remote workers by providing opportunities for them to develop their potential and helping them with each step.
- Map out and publish paths of development for all remote employees
- Establish and encourage a culture of growth
- Offer online learning opportunities
- Start a mentoring program within your organization
- Support networking opportunities
- Reinforce remote company culture
- Meet regularly with each employee individually for encouragement and feedback
Remember to help your remote employees develop themselves in other ways that can also impact their work. Why not provide ideas and motivation for physical fitness opportunities? Provide a company or team Slack channel dedicated to employee fitness activities, suggested exercises and routines, and more. Maybe facilitate a regular team video session for those wishing to exercise together. You could also provide a channel for those undergoing personal development exercises.
Give Them Purpose
Everyone wants to enjoy some measure of significance, to feel as if what they do matters. Keep your remote team motivated by giving them purpose. Here are some ways do to this:
Empower Experimentation - Give people the opportunity to experiment and solve problems that really matter. Invite input from your remote employees about how your company can serve clients better, improve products or delivery, or other vital ideas. Then put them to work making it happen. Reward all efforts, even those that fail, to encourage a mindset of creativity.
Facilitate Collaboration - Building remote work teams that regularly work together and communicate together can improve work outcomes but also build a sense of community. Create teams and the means for them to work together via Slack, video conferencing, file sharing, and other means.
Encourage Community Involvement - Share ways to help out in the community and encourage your remote workers and their families to become involved. Create a Slack channel for community involvement, encourage workers to post pics and opportunities, and have a “do good” portion in your weekly meetings to recognize those who participate and encourage others.
Provide for Play
Remote employees need to be able to interact with their workmates on an informal basis. Relationships are what keep many workers in the same company for years. Facilitate this interaction by encouraging employees to share birthdays, special family events, and other notable happenings with their team members.
- Start a company game channel on Slack for employees to share about their favorite gaming experiences.
- Start a company cooking channel on Slack for employees to trade recipes, tips, and photos of their creations.
- Start a company hobby channel for any notable hobbies.
- See the suggestion above for a company fitness channel.
Informal communication is also a valuable relief valve for stress. Workers can vent to other workers who have similar struggles and the same unique perspectives. This provides an outlet that is healthy and needed. And, by providing a channel for this stress, perhaps a place to share problems and suggestions, you are contributing to the health of your employees and your company.
You can also keep your remote team motivated by providing them with robust Internet and networking tools for superior communication and collaboration. MHO can help. Call 877-WANT-MHO to inquire about our services and check for availability in your area.
