5 Ways To Motivate Your Print Shop Employees

Your business is only as successful as the employees that work there. 

As a business owner or manager, keeping employees motivated and engaged should be fairly high on the to-do list. Employees are the heartbeat of any business and if they’re not motivated to work, the business will suffer. 

Do you have employees in dire need of motivation? Are you worried your employees are just going through the motions on a day-to-day basis? Are you just curious as to what you can do to change things up from time to time?  If so, you’ve come to the right place. 

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to finding a way to motivate employees. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t fixable. 

Here are five tips DecoNetwork has provided to help get your employees motivated and putting their best foot forward at all times. 

1) Create a Good Culture

When it comes to keeping your employees motivated, there’s no better place to start than with the environment in which they work. 

Think about the amount of time your employees spend at work. Odds are they’re spending more time at their place of work than they are at home. With so much time spent working, you owe it to them to create a supportive and enjoyable work environment.

You never want your employees to feel uncomfortable while they’re at work. You want to create an environment based on respect, positivity, and trust. Your employees want to feel respected, be surrounded by positive energy, and be trusted to do their job successfully. 

You as a manager should always be looking for new ways to improve your companies work environment.

Allow your employees to personalize their workspace. Partake in team-building activities and have the occasional team lunch. These are all ways to keep the work environment fresh and enjoyable and ultimately lead to more productive work for all parties involved.

2) Provide Consistent Feedback

Providing consistent feedback has my vote for the single most successful way to keep your employees motivated and challenged. 

This goes for every kind of feedback, both positive and negative. You want your employees to know that you’re paying attention to what they’re doing and that when the time comes, they can expect some feedback. 

At the end of the day, you want your employees to leave work feeling valued and appreciated. If your employees feel valued, they are a lot more likely to feel motivated and want to continue doing whatever it was that got them feeling that way. 

If they aren’t receiving some sort of feedback on a regular basis, oftentimes they won’t truly know how good of a job they’re doing. You do not want your employees guessing whether or not they’re producing quality work. 

Some companies will provide an annual review. While that’s great, it’s not frequent enough. Keeping your employees abreast of how they’re performing at their job will show them that you care about both the business and what they bring to the table as an employee. 

3) Give Your Team Autonomy

It’s fairly safe to say that employees don’t enjoy being micromanaged. Do you want to get on an employee’s bad side? Start micromanaging them. It’s an easy way to lose an employee and your business culture will suffer.

If you want to keep your employees motivated and producing at a high level, a healthy amount of autonomy is needed in the workplace. 

How do you accomplish that as an owner or manager? Start slow. 

It’s not a good idea to do a complete 180 on the way you manage your employees. So if you’ve been operating in an atmosphere where autonomy is non-existent, ease it into the workplace. 

You want them to feel trusted to do their job. While I’m sure every manager would agree with that, giving your employees autonomy can be a difficult change if you haven’t had a history of doing it. 

Giving them autonomy builds self-sufficient employees. As a manager, let your employees manage their own tasks and offer your help if needed. They will feel much more comfortable and motivated this way.

It’s your job as a manager to find the right balance between not enough and too much autonomy. The goal of autonomy is to create an environment in which employees feel at their best.

When an employee is at their best, the sky is the limit at what they can accomplish. 

4) Be a Good Manager

If you’re a manager and you’re reading this, ask yourself this. “Am I a good manager?” 

You might think you’re a good manager, but do your employees think you are? I’m sure everyone has worked for a bad manager at some point in their career. How did that affect you as an employee? I’m sure not very good. 

Imagine how hard it would be to keep your employees motivated if they know they had to go to work every day and put up with a sub-par manager. And if you can visibly see that they aren’t motivated, it can only amplify the things they don’t like about you. 

If you asked your employees if they would prefer working for a manager that leads by example, took the time to know each of them, and did their best to make the workplace the best it can be rather than one that didn’t do any of that, what would their answer be? 

One of the best ways a manager can win over their employees is to lead by example. If they see you working hard on a daily basis and putting in the max effort, that can be a big motivator. 

If you want the best out of your employees, you need to show them the way. 

Another great tip to becoming a great manager is to get to know the people working for you and know what makes them tick. All of your employees are going to react differently to things, and you as a manager need to know that. 

Take some time out of your workday to say hello to all of your employees. Ask them how their day is going and always offer any assistance they might need. And remember that your conversations with them don’t always have to be about work. There is a time and place for friendly conversation and that can go a long way. 

5) Celebrate Success

You as a company should always be looking to reward and celebrate success and that goes for both company-wide success and individual success. 

The celebrations can be as simple as a lunch party one week. You as a manager or business owner can decide how you want to celebrate success. The objective is to give your employees some type of incentive or goal to work towards. 

There isn’t an employee out there that wouldn’t appreciate a pat on the back every so often for the good work they produce. Be creative in the way you as a business celebrates achievements and you will be well on your way to keeping employees happy and motivated.