How to motivate staff in your small business

Motivated staff are one of the most crucial ingredients contributing to the success of any business. Motivated staff means it will be much more likely that you will have satisfied customers. So what can you do as a manager and small business owner to motivate your staff?

1. Treat your staff with respect and courtesy – It’s the small stiff that counts….. Greeting your people in the morning; taking an interest in what they get up to outside of work; remembering when their birthday is; thanking them for their efforts. Your staff are people, and not just workers. Yes, they are paid to do a job and you need to monitor that they are doing it properly. But they still deserve to be treated with respect – and if you show that you care for them, then they will care for your customers
2. Be a positive role model – As the leader, your actions and energy set the tone in your workplace, so make sure you are in the right state of mind when you get to work. Try to switch off from any personal issues and focus on what needs to be done that day at work. If you don’t display some enthusiasm for the business and what you are doing, then why should your staff?
3. Focus on improvement, rather than blame – We all make mistakes at some time. When your employee makes a mistake, do you reprimand them harshly? Or do you take them aside and discuss with them what went wrong, why it went wrong and what’s needed to make sure it doesn’t happen again?
4. Keep your staff informed – People like to know what’s going on, so keep them updated about what’s happening in the business. Whether it’s new products in the pipeline, or new customers, or changes that are planned to your systems – keep your staff in the picture. A brief meeting scheduled regularly, perhaps at the beginning or end of every week, where you discuss with your team what’s happening and check whether they are seeing any problems that need to be addressed.
5. Find out what’s important to your staff – People are motivated by different things in the workplace. What motivates you may not necessarily be so important to some of your staff. Some of the things that people look for out of work includes ….

• Job security
•  Good salary
•  Fringe benefits
• Pleasant and comfortable working environment
• Interesting work that offers challenge
• Recognition and appreciation for good work
• Cooperative and friendly working relationships
• A sense of personal achievement
• Being consulted and participating in some decision making
• Opportunities for promotion and advancement
• Opportunities to develop and learn new skills
• Flexible working arrangements
• A manager or supervisor who is fair, approachable and supportive. There are plenty of practical people management tips at Management of staff

So in closing, you can’t assume that staff will remain motivated. Of course when you first recruited staff into your business, you were probably looking for people who were self-motivated, goal oriented and had shown they had demonstrated some initiative.

But even with self-motivated staff, you must still manage them correctly. If you start taking their efforts for granted, if you fail to provide a good working environment and if you start paying them less than what they’re worth – then their motivation will drop, and you risk losing their loyalty. 

By the way, concern for your own motivation must go hand-in-hand with thinking about staff motivation. If you ever find yourself struggling with your own motivation – then have a look at Self-Motivation Tips

The entrepreneur's guide to motivating the team

In this short video clip, author Robin Sharma offers some great advice on how to build team spirit and motivation in the workplace ...



If you want some more ideas on how to encourage teamwork in your workplace, have a look at Team Development

The Small Business Trap

Are you working on your business, or in your business? This was the provocative question that Michael Gerber posed in his classic best-selling book, The E-Myth.

He explained that many people were motivated to start up a small business because they were fed up working for someone else and believed that being good at their craft, they would make more money and have more independence working for themselves.

This is what Gerber termed the Myth of the Entrepreneur ....... because the reality was often very different. Many small business owners would find themselves working long hours - in the pursuit of profits that too often proved elusive.

In the more recent edition of the book, The E-Myth Revisited, Gerber explains that the small business owner must be capable of performing three different roles - the Technician, the Entrepreneur and the Manager.

Usually the owner is naturally a technician, but if he or she is going to grow the business, they need to become an entrepreneur and listen to their customers, assess their competition and recognise where the opportunity gaps in the market may be. In the role of manager, they need to establish efficient systems, procedures and processes that will enable the business to become less reliant upon the owner. This is what working on the business means, but to do so requires working less in the business.

Learning to let go of the technical work, gradually training others to be able to do this work and supporting them with adequate documented procedures - this is one of the keys to growing your business successfully. By systemising your business with documented procedures, Gerber says you help to ensure consistency in the delivery of your service or product. You also establish a framework that potentially lends your small business to a franchising structure - and an expansion of your revenue stream

You might also like to have a look at Common Small Business Pitfalls