Motivation and Productivity

What started off novel and maybe even considered a luxury, ‘working from home’ for many once-office workers is now simply just ‘working’.

Many businesses have made the decision to continue remote working for employees for the remainder of 2020 and into 2021 and so with that comes new, long-term challenges.

The Martee Group Work from Home Study found that a significant proportion of employees were struggling with ‘job motivation’ during the pandemic, largely as a result of working from home. Only 36% of respondents reported feeling job motivated compared to 56% of respondents before the pandemic.

In any work place, employee motivation is essential for driving productivity so we’ve shared our top 6 ways to motivate remote working employees.

1. Peer-to-peer rewards and recognition

We’ve long been shouting about the importance of structured rewards and recognition programmes but they’ve never been more important than they are today.

Whilst at the moment its not possible to give a colleague a pat on the back or buy them a drink after work to say job well done, it’s important that these small acts of recognition don’t stop happening all together.

Something simple we like to do at Inconnection is our monthly ‘Cruising and Crushing it’ Award which goes to a team member who has worked hard and impressed the rest of the agency. The great thing about this is it can easily be adapted to our online working environment and it gives us that sense of ‘team’ that’s really important to us as an agency.

We suggest putting an event like this in the diary every month to give your team something small to work towards and look forward to.

2. Virtual Events

For most people, the biggest challenge of working from home is the lack of interaction with colleagues in the office. Whilst formal meetings are easy to arrange, it’s much harder to engage in small-talk and the office chatter that keeps the day moving.

To help create that sociable, relaxed feel among teams again, we’ve recently launched an entire range of Ready Made Events that start from just £55 per person and include everything from beer tasting to comedy nights.

Click below to visit our Ready Made Event Gallery and see what kind of event you could throw. 

3. Take if offline (and put it in the post)

Whilst a lot of what we’re able to do at the moment centres around technology, there’s something to be said for taking things offline too.

We used our MemMail service at the very beginning of lockdown to reach out and send our best wishes to clients and the response we got was incredible. The act of sending a physical gift directly to someone’s door feels extremely genuine and could be just what you and your team need as we move into this next phase of at home working.

One way of making a MemMail send a team activity is by asking each person to choose a gift for one other person in the team. They simply tell us what they want to buy and for who by filling out a simple Microsoft Forms survey and we take care of the sourcing, packing and sending!

4. Motivational speaker

A motivational speaker is a classic yet extremely effective tool for reinvigorating employees. In this strange time, it might not just be work that employees feel disengaged with and a motivational speaker from the world of sport or entertainment could be the pick-me-up they need.

Usually, we’d want to get everyone together for this type of event but the great thing is that it can easily be reformatted for a virtual or hybrid event instead.

To find out who you could have as your motivational speaker, get in touch.

5. Get creative with technology

The way we use technology can have a huge impact on the way it makes us feel. You’ll know if you’ve ever played an addictive video game that it releases adrenaline and endorphins that keep you engaged and playing for longer, and it’s actually possible to use some of those features in the technology platforms that we use for work too.

If you use Microsoft Teams, you might have heard of the Incentives App which is a great way of encouraging team members to take part in certain activities or our Rewards Platform is brilliant if you want to implement a more structured approach that’s highly customised to your business objectives.

With our Rewards Platform, it’s possible to create a central hub for all of education, training and incentive activities and employees have the chance to earn rewards in the form of vouchers or gifts. Get in touch to find out more.

6. Team building

With so many organisations undergoing significant changes and restructurers, team building has never been more important. Many people are working with new team members, or even in entirely new roles, and getting to know one another can be difficult when we’re all at home.  

For us, team building isn’t necessarily about the typical team building activities but about sharing experiences that bring you closer together. It can be as simple as giving you something to talk about!

We recently ran a virtual cook-a-long with professional chef, Jane Devonshire. Jane led the group in a step-by-step cooking demonstration that they followed along with in their own homes. The feedback we had was fantastic – the guests enjoyed meeting Jane and sharing the experience with colleagues who they hadn’t connected with in a while.

Our virtual cook-along is just one of the event formats in our Ready Made Events gallery. To find out more, or to discover what else is available, click the button below.

We’d love to talk to you about how you can take advantage of our motivational tools and virtual events.

Get in touch