You’re a leader, you’re an entrepreneur who knows how to run your family entertainment centre and you have everything you need to make your business a roaring success…but are you overlooking something? It’s time to come to grips with something grim: You are only as good as the first impressions that your employees give your customers. Employees will make or break your business and they can be responsible for a huge percentage of your good and bad feedback.
This is why you need to make it your business to motivate your employees as a part of your better business model. Any time can be a distracting time for workers, and while everyone needs to unwind, too many distractions can kill a team’s productivity. Here are five ways great leaders use to keep their people engaged and energized during the year:
1. Make work a game. Your people spend their free time golfing, surfing, hiking or fishing, so why not make work more of a contest. Set goals to sell more products, develop better processes, or meet more client needs, and then reward the winners with prizes. Another idea: Hold a lunchtime trivia contest with questions about company products and history—again with prizes for the champs.
2. Take a break together. One afternoon take a break together to have a meeting in a park or other interesting place. Breaking free from the office or staff room can make all the difference in retention. Maybe take the team to ride go-carts or just throw a Frisbee around at the park. Or have a chili cook-off with employees bringing their best recipes. The bottom line: It’s your job to help your staff feel like more of a team.
3. Institute a fun tradition. Play a great song way too loud each afternoon (and let a different person chose the music each day). Take a doughnut break Monday morning, or have a pot luck lunch on Wednesday, or keep a Scrabble game ongoing on Fridays in the staff room or office.
4. Conduct “previews.” This is an informal review with a chance to sit down with your direct reports and evaluate progress toward their goals and, more importantly for them, what their career ambitions are and what you can do to help achieve those goals.
5. Recognize potential: recognition doesn’t have to be stuffy. Surprise an employee of the month on the FEC floor. It’s a great way to keep things light, and certainly pleasant for customers.
Be a great owner and manager. Go ahead and try one of these ideas. The point is lighten up and keep things fun in the coming months, but also help your people focus and stretch to reach their goals! Make your FEC the best it can be by empowering and motivating your staff!
What ways do you motivate and inspire your staff to be the best they can be? We’d love to hear from you.
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