As a company’s success grows, employee motivation can actually begin to suffer. To combat this, a new article from First Round Review advises leaders to focus on four building blocks of employee motivation:
People: Ensure your teams are adequately staffed so employees don’t feel overwhelmed by their workloads, which can sap their energy and their motivation. People also need to like and trust those they work with—or at least respect their skillsets. Leaders should consider trust-building as mission-critical as recruiting, perhaps designing time-bound projects that force teams to work across multiple disciplines.
Ownership: It’s important to make sure every employee understands and takes responsibility for their own piece of the bigger picture. As a leader, your job is to equip people with the right context for decision-making, then help them build the intuition and confidence to act decisively. Communicate what you need and why it’s important, and let the team find the solution instead of imposing one from the outside.
Goals: The best goals are measurable, hard to achieve and impactful to the business. Start by agreeing on a set of target metrics you can use to measure the progress of each project, team or the company as a whole. Ensure the metrics are correctly aligned to each stage of the project’s life cycle, as teams are often prone to undershooting during the scaling phase.
Mission: Ensure employees understand how their work benefits the company as a whole. Communicate the company’s mission clearly and often—at least once a week in email and once a week in person. Give teams the opportunity to share what they’re working on with the rest of the organization so everyone can see they’re working toward the same purpose.
For more information, including how to spot flagging motivation and tips on turning things around, see the full article: “The Simple Tool That Revives Employee Motivation.”