Tag Archives: employee management

How to Motivate Employees to Love Their Jobs

Anyone who runs or manages a small business knows how difficult it can be to keep employee morale high. According to a recent Gallop poll, 70 percent of Americans don’t enjoy showing up to work each day. This just won’t do if you want your business to thrive—your employees play a vital role in the success of your company. If you can somehow motivate them to start to love (or at least strongly like) doing what they do, it will be beneficial for everyone involved.

Don’t Neglect Praise

It’s essential to give praise to your employees when it’s deserved. Many managers feel as if doing so will show a weakness of some sort, but it can actually serve to improve the employee’s job performance by leaps and bounds. Relate this to your own life—if your spouse or a loved one gives you genuine thanks and praise for completing a task, doesn’t it make you want to do it more and even better the next time? One caveat: be sure that you’re being genuine in your praise; you don’t want your employees to think that you’re reaching or being patronizing with them.

Limit the Rules

It’s important for every workplace to have rules, but restricting your employees too much will most likely cause them to develop a strong distaste for their jobs. Don’t lose an otherwise very strong employee because he took a seven-minute bathroom break instead of five—that type of nitpicking is counterproductive and doesn’t look at the bigger picture for your business. Give employees room to breathe if you want them to love their jobs.

At the same time, if an employee is completely disrespectful of all of your business rules even after several warnings, it may be best to let him go and give another qualified person a shot at the job. Too much contention with an employee who refuses to get with the program will create a tense relationship, and tension is a strong barrier to motivation.

Reward Employees with Meaningful Gifts

One of the best ways to get your employees to truly love what they do is to show your appreciation with gifts from time to time. A pat on the back is nice, but giving your employee a pair of tickets to the next home game of his favorite basketball team is even better. The gift has to be meaningful, which is why you should know a thing or two about each of your workers’ interests besides their work performance. The occasional meaningful gift shows that you have good will towards your employees, and they’ll respond to this in ways that you might not have ever expected.

To put it simply, employees who love their jobs are more productive. Since your job as a small business owner is to increase productivity, getting them to love their work more is highly beneficial to you and your company’s performance. If you can keep the level of motivation high, everyone involved will have something to gain.