For the past decade, companies have started edging towards a different way of doing things, but 2020 fully accelerated our national adoption of new working practices.
We should all be applauded for adapting so rapidly to such circumstances, but now that we are over a year in, what have we got right and what could we do better?
New research.
A new poll conducted by YouGov and Vestd sheds light on these questions.
2000+ British employees were surveyed to find out the attitudes of workers from across the country. What do they find motivating and demotivating in the workplace? What would make them jump from one company to another? And what can employers do to ensure that their teams are driven, aligned and dynamic?
Motivating factors.
It’s easy to imagine that you know how to motivate your employees, but getting the information straight from the horse’s mouth gives you valuable insight.
Participants in the study were provided with a long list of motivating factors and were asked to choose just one as their biggest driving force in the workplace.
Somewhat surprisingly, the top result was something that’s absolutely free. 32% of respondents simply want to feel ‘appreciated and thanked’.
If you or your team members don’t have a culture of gratitude, it might be the right time to make a concerted effort to ensure that efforts are recognised. You don’t have to go down the ‘employee of the month’ route, but you can ensure that excellent work is highlighted at appropriate junctures. You can also ask your senior team to offer more (genuine) ad hoc praise whenever the opportunity arises.
After recognition, ‘a large salary’ bagged second place and ‘working with purpose’ secured third place with 27% of the vote.
If you don’t have deep pockets, you can still address the question of ‘purpose’. Ensure that your team members are aware of how their projects link into the bigger picture.
You can enhance ‘purpose’ by creating a company mission that is larger than the company itself.
So if your company sells medical equipment for example, instead of making it your mission to make £x per annum, make it your mission to contribute to the global effort to eradicate preventable childhood diseases.
Think big and aspire to greater social and environmental impacts.
Demotivating factors.
YouGov gave participants a list of demotivating factors and asked them to choose the ones that resonated the most for them. They were asked to select as many as applied.
The top five are:
(70%) Poor communication from management.
(68%) Poor salary and/or benefits.
(63%) Job insecurity.
(60%) Micromanagement
(57%) Lack of confidence in management/leadership.
In terms of actionable advice, by focussing on the top three, there are plenty of improvements that company leaders can make.
Poor communication was chosen by two thirds of those surveyed so this is a clear area of concern for many employees.
Have your methods worked well over the past year? A year into the pandemic is a good time to assess what’s worked and what hasn’t, before your methods simply become entrenched in company culture.
Poor comms can be down to not enough information, siloed information (which can make staff feel ‘out of the loop’ and unimportant) or badly timed information (getting data to a team member an hour before they need to give a presentation on the subject for example).
If this is your company, work on some firm in-house decorum when it comes to communications. Rules such as ‘we will report Department X figures to the whole team by the first of each month’, or ‘we will respond to all internal emails within two hours’, can help to unblock demotivating information jams in your network.
Information fatigue.
Conversely, all of our communication tools can overwhelm us. If your team is bouncing between Slack, email, Linkedin, Whatsapp and Hubspot notifications, they may be drowning in comms fatigue.
If you suspect that you need work in this area, don’t be afraid of inviting discussion from the team. What’s working for them and what isn’t? You might discover that you can cull certain platforms altogether.
Poor salary and/or benefits.
It’s no surprise to see that uninspiring salary and benefit packages were cited as demotivating by 68% of participants.
If your salaries are below competitive rate and you can afford to give your team a rise, then go for it. However, given the climate, it’s difficult for many businesses to stretch their finances as things stand.
If this is you, think about what you can do to enhance your company’s benefit package.
Cost-effective ideas include offering more flexibility, restaurant vouchers or reduced gym membership. Reed has itemised a lot of quick wins to get you started here.
You could also consider implementing an employee share/option scheme. These are surprisingly resource-light to set up (starting from just £150 per month for 1-10 employees), and with online platforms like Vestd, they are also straightforward to manage.
Employee share schemes are an incredibly impactful benefit as they align and motivate the whole team towards a shared goal. If you choose to use a platform or app, your team members can also see the value of their shares or options in real time, providing an incentive like no other.
So there you have it.
You now have an authoritative overview of what makes UK employees tick.
Not all of the data will apply to all companies, but everybody can recognise the motivating or demotivating factors that might be reported by their teams.
By following the advice in this article and weeding out bad habits now, you can better arm yourself for a productive and profitable 2021!
