Tell Your Team Why Their Work Matters and Watch Productivity Skyrocket

Tell Your Team Why Their Work Matters and Watch Productivity Skyrocket

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” - Simon Sinek

We live in a world driven by data, and so it’s easy to fall into the routine of only thinking about reaching financial targets. Managers and business owners can get so consumed with looking at the numbers that they fail to see what actually drives their employees’ motivation.

And by keeping in mind that your employees are people with varying desires and needs, you could very well be contributing to a positive financial output in the long run.

That’s because research is now beginning to show that, while it is a factor, employees are not entirely driven by the compensation they receive. They need to know why the work they are doing matters and the impact that it has.

Avoid transactional relationships

If you are consistently spending a lot of time talking to your employees about the targets or numbers that they need to reach, it can create a transactional relationship. When that begins to happen, employees are more likely to have the same relationship with their teams and customers.

Transactional relationships are merely functional, where each party is only in it for themselves. If everyone is only looking out for their own interests, then your business may take a knock for it going forward.

Give your employees purpose

The first step of this will be to find out what personally drives your employees and be sincere about it. What makes them feel inspired, engaged, and productive?

Share with them the impact that they have on your customers or clients. When an employee can see the effect that they have and get fulfillment from their job, they are more likely to go the extra mile.

Go above and beyond an annual review

We all know that communication is paramount. These days, it is ranking in the top five aspects of employee satisfaction. So why are some companies leaving communication to only a yearly review?

Employees come to dread annual performance reviews because an entire year’s worth of work is squashed into one meeting and the data seldom does justice to the overall effort put in.

It’s vital that there is continual, authentic communication between your teams and senior management to fulfill the long-term goals of your employees and your business. 

By making sure that your teams are seen and heard, you’re impacting job satisfaction in the best way. This, in turn, has a positive effect on retention and the overall success of your brand.

“What man actually needs is not some tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.” – Viktor Frankl