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‘One team, one dream’: Three tips to ensure staff stay motivated

Company success and motivated and engaged staff go hand-in-hand, no matter the size or turnover of your small-to-medium business.
Jürgen Himmelmann
Jürgen Himmelmann
expanding
Jürgen Himmelmann, co-founder and chief executive officer at The Global Work & Travel Co. Source: Supplied.

Company success and staff motivation and engagement go hand-in-hand no matter the size or turnover of a business.

From sales staff to administration and leadership teams, the ‘one team, one dream’ principle is an important foundation for each staff member to refer back to when moving throughout their career.

But how do you create momentum with a range of staff at different points in the business and different milestones in their careers — and get results?

Mentoring and development support

The Global Work & Travel Co. employs over 100 people across Australia, Canada and the UK. During our 10 years in business so far, I have found offering staff mentoring and development support and celebrating employees’ individual wins have been key ingredients to retaining great team members.

Mentoring also speeds up the process of onboarding new staff and offers existing employees the opportunity to grow into new lines of work.

Positive company culture

Creating a positive company culture is essential and our leadership team actively creates and sets a positive tone to ensure staff feel valued and encouraged to do the best job possible. If staff do not feel this sense of value, morale will eventually disintegrate.

A great culture helps companies grow into the best they can be. A bad one holds it back and leads to numerous issues that are expensive to fix down the track.

Your management team should be the largest influence in your workplace culture. If they do not have it right, it is near impossible for their team to buy into it.

Financial incentives and recognition

It is important to recognise high achievers and reward them with unique experiences they wouldn’t or couldn’t do usually, attainable and juicy financial bonuses and team bonding activities. I have found by doing this, all staff strive hard to achieve and even surpass their KPI’s.

I have also found incentivising staff with out-of-work team events and days out when certain targets are met helps new staff get to know senior staff in an off-the-job scenario, helping to build fast friendships.

The same principle applies to non-revenue-generating teams too.

Taking the time to look after staff will result in happy employees who perform to the best of their ability and stay with a company for years, which will play a fundamental role in growth and expansion.

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