Work demotivation, learn how to avoid this and keep your team happy
Being motivated should be a key element in anyone’s life, always make an effort, do things with more enthusiasm and remember to enjoy it, this way you will feel better and your performance will be better too. But this is not always possible; if you are the leader of a company we encourage you to read these tips to avoid work demotivation. We are sure that if your employees feel motivated then you will get a better performance and a happier workplace.
In our article about motivating employees, we talked about 11 tips on how to improve work motivation. We are pretty sure that you’ve already put them into practice, now you need to know what to avoid, and although there are days when we think we are doing everything perfectly, we might make mistakes which can cause work demotivation.
Don’t forget that your employees are human beings and they want to be treated properly
We know that this may sound obvious but we are sure that some people forget about this, we experience good, bad and weird days, so your mood might drive your employees crazy. If you slept on the sofa last night, and your baby was crying all night long, and this Sunday you will meet your parents-in-law then it’s quite normal to feel this way, but if you are going to motivate your workers, do not lay all your problems on them. This will just stress them out and will encourage work demotivation
You need to know how to communicate properly
If you own a gym where you scream, insult people and you lay all your problems on the people you are training, because you think this way they will feel more motivated, then, if they don’t like it they will find another gym. But when it comes to employees you have to avoid bad manners, remember that all of us are people and that we like to be treated properly when doing our jobs. If you are a bit cold and you know it, you might need to learn techniques in order to learn to communicate, we are sure that if you want, little by little you’ll stop looking like an evil character from a Disney film.
Don’t set unrealistic goals
As you know, your team works much better with goals, so you have decided to set that each one of them has to sell 672 socks per month by going door-to-door. In the end everyone ends up
overwhelmed and tired as, they did not reach their goals and now they feel bad about themselves. Actually you only wanted them to sell at least 15, but you do this to motivate them. But remember If you see that they are losing hair, it is very possible that you might have something to do with that … Set achievable, realistic goals. This way they’ll feel more comfortable knowing that they will do their job properly.
Don’t go crazy when motivating them
Do you think that if someone is already motivated and you decide to motivate them even more, they will work more? That is very unlikely, they will probably think that you are crazy and will probably turn up the volume of the headphones every time you walk past. But also, if someone is going through a personal issue, it doesn’t matter how hard you tell them not to be sad, it won’t work, but what will happen is that they will get overwhelmed and try to flee as soon as they have the chance. Understand them, do not harass your workers, because each person (even if you do not believe it) has a life outside of work. Encourage them every now and then and get to know your employees, so that you can motivate them properly.
Some motivation techniques don’t work for everyone
Surely all workers appreciate when someone tells them that they are doing their job well, and when they congratulate them as soon as those goals have been achieved. But perhaps there are those who work best with deadlines, other who work best at their own pace and those who need to have everything perfectly planned and organised. Since everyone works differently, some things will work for some people but these same things will not work for other people. If you see that the techniques you are using don’t work, find out new techniques to achieve a proper environment.
Don’t compare or talk in a pessimistic way
Is your motivational technique based on comparing your employees? Maybe Albert feels pretty bad because he sold less than Taylor, comparing will only make him feel worse and he will end up having work demotivation. If you motivate without an initiative, with little desire and even in a pessimistic way, then you workers will get discouraged.
Do follow-up research about work motivation
You have fixed the office, you have put new chairs, and every two days you tell the employees that they do their jobs properly and you even cook for them every now and then, but you still notice that there is a bad work environment in the office. Maybe there is something that is keeping your employees worried, maybe it has to do with the fact that you pay them 700 € and they spend more than 10 hours in the office. The best thing in this case is to ask them, to perform a follow-up research on the measures that are being carried out in order to see what you can improve. You can use surveys, small meetings etc.
There are more mistakes that lead to work demotivation, but before you go we need to remind you that your employees are people, so you should treat them as such, respect them and reward them when they deserve it, we are sure that you don’t need anything else to keep them happy.
So far, these are some of the mistakes that might lead to work demotivation, we encourage you to share with us those mistakes that you have experienced at your workplace by leaving a comment in the comment section. Try to avoid these mistakes in order to achieve a happier environment at work.
