4 Ways to Motivate Your Staff in the First Quarter - E30
The fourth quarter is a perfect ending to the year. We tend to be busy, but we have built in breaks to recharge. Starting in November we have Thanksgiving, then there is Christmas Eve and Christmas day, and New years day. If you live in the northern part of the country, we may even get a snow day or two.
The question I ask is: how do you keep your staff motivated, energized, and excited for the first quarter that is usually incredibly busy and there is no end in sight? The weather can be dreary and even without a pandemic, my staff in the state of Michigan may see the sunshine once or twice a week! Here are some tips…
1. Have Long Term Goals/Vision
When JFK visited NASA once he was said to have asked a janitor what his job was there. The janitor replied that he was there to put a man on the moon. What would your staff say their job is when asked? Make sure they are fighting for something bigger than a paycheck, answering phones, or selling glasses. Now, having something big like this is great and is the giant carrot they work towards, but it will not get you through the day to day grind of Q1. Let’s explore ways to help in the short term.
2. Make it fun
A term I have heard is to “gameify” the office! We set up fun friendly competitions in the office. We will all pick our 5 favorite frames and get “points” for whoever picks the frames that sell the most. There have been times when we picked about 30 frames and had a “draft” where we took time during an office meeting to select our rosters. Make it fun and keep score. We have a weekly scoreboard that they can track and we get prizes for the weekly or monthly winners. This keeps them engaged and gives them something to look forward to on a smaller scale.
3. Incentivize what you value
This is a two-fold process. It helps you emphasize the things you think are important, but it also gives the staff a reason (beyond a paycheck, yes they need more than money) to go the extra-mile. We give points for certain activities such as frame sales, yearly supplies, new patients, total patients, etc… and every 100 points gives them 1 hour of pay at the end of the quarter. Again, give them a scoreboard and help motivate the behaviors you want to see more of.
4. Reward Incentives
This goes hand in hand with the incentives, but you have to give them something bigger than a gift card or hourly wage. I have given away free frames, trips, taken the office out to eat. It does not matter what you do, just REWARD their efforts. People want to be praised and they appreciate it if you show you mean it.
Try these 4 strategies and replace those SAD faces with genuine smiles!
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