Engage Your Employees by Giving Them Satisfying Work

Acknowledging the potential in your employees and encouraging them to increase their skills will result in your employees feeling mentally stimulated.  Support your employees when they inquire about obtaining additional training.  When employees receive additional training they tend to be happier at work.   Employees have to be given the opportunity to grow their skills and increase their opportunity to promote.  It’s important that you give your employees something to do that satisfies them, work that leaves them at the end of the day feeling that they made a difference to your company. 

Give Your Employees Something to Do

Joseph Addison, once said, "Three good essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for."   As a manager, part of engaging your team is by talking to your employees and finding out what part of their jobs they thrive at.  Mixing in tasks that are interesting, fun, and challenging throughout the week will engage your employees and increase performance.  When work is challenging the employee is forced out of their boring routine.  This will challenge and stimulate their brain resulting in increased energy.  Offering your employees work that will challenge their minds and skills will benefit them and your company for many years.

Give Your Employees Something to Love

When you sit down with your employee to discuss their performance evaluation ask them about any skills they may possess that are not being used in your office setting.  Many people possess additional abilities and use them outside of work, such as in their church or other community organizations.  These are skills they enjoy.  By allowing your employees to incorporate these skills in their jobs will give them something to love.

Give Your Employees Something to Hope For

In order to have employees that want to remain with your company they must feel they have the opportunity to grow and promote.  People must never feel stagnant or feel they have limited options.  When there is a decline in your employees' drive to succeed, so goes the drive to perform.  People are evolving entities they must feel challenged through learning, and through taking on new challenges.  However, the nature of people is to reject change.  Therefore, within most people is a battle of wanting to grow, but not wanting to change.  So how will your employees satisfy this conundrum?  The ideal solution is to grow and promote within the environment in which they already feel comfortable, your company. 

You are probably now already thinking of ways to inspire and motivate your employees.  Here are a few recommendations to get more out of your staff. 

First, give your employees a self-assessment tool.  This self analysis will allow your employees to scrutinize their own job performance.  Ask them for input as to how they can improve their productivity. 

Second, discuss with your employees additional courses or seminars they may want to take during the course of the year to increase their skills.   This will encourage professional growth for your employees within your organization.  If you have the budget, you may want to subsidize all or a portion of these courses.  After all you and your organization will also benefit from your employee’s growth. 

Lastly, encourage entrepreneurial thinking.  Reward & recognize out-of-the-box suggestions.  Create a system within your organization that will propel great ideas from the suggestion box to the boardroom.  When your employees see that ideas are taken seriously, this will boost their morale and self-esteem.  The ideas that come from your employees will probably need refining, so sit down with the employee and discuss the prospect in detail.  Drawing out all of the possibilities of the suggested idea will bring out the best in you, your employee and the suggestion.