By: Godfrey Madanhire, Professional Motivational Speaker and Life Coach
It’s been a turbulent start to 2019, domestically. With plans to introduce load shedding stages 5 – 6, petrol prices sky-rocketing, and investigations into corruption scandals, there’s no escaping distracting news. Especially when the lights go out.
As the leader of your company, the role of motivating your staff to push through the problems and deliver is squarely set at your feet. This motivation is essential as a company that doesn’t produce will close. Here are a few suggestions you can follow to ensure you switch on your employees’ motivation in these distracting times.
Find Solutions
We’ve all become accustomed to enquiring about services at a company only to be met with the excuse that they’re being load shedded and can’t deliver. While the situation has escalated over the last few years, we all know there are solutions to keep your enterprise running – even in the darkest hours.
For office workers, it’s working on battery-powered laptops, using a inverter to power your servers and maintain internet connections – even using a cellphone to connect to the web. And if you’re in production, petrol generators will do. The point is, there are solutions to ensure that work doesn’t need to stop.
Being able to provide your employees with an environment that is immune to load shedding hassles also lowers stress levels and motivates them as you’re a leader that doesn’t quit.
Keep Communication Channels Open
Having an open dialogue with employees is always beneficial. You’d be surprised how many disconnected, uncommunicative employers I’ve engaged with over the years. This divide creates tension and an unmotivated team who are scared of you.
A paranoid, worried, and unresponsive staff is one that’s not productive. I can not overstate this cliche enough; an open door policy is key to a functional company of any size! One method to ensure that your staff know you’re willing to chat is to engage them in friendly conversations daily.
While this is a fine tightrope walk, you’ll need to keep the conversations respectful rather than overly friendly, but if you don’t try, you’ll always be stuck at square one.
Your employees follow public issues
We all know South Africa has its problems as they’re thrown in our faces daily. Rather than steer away from the issues when employees discuss them, encourage a civil discussion about them.
A little conversation, or debate, is good to ease built-up anger. South Africans often forget the toll negative news takes, so nurture an environment where these problems can be discussed.
As with any problem, discussing it is the first step in dealing with it. After talking through the issues, your staff will be able to focus on the task at hand and will automatically start picking up their morale levels.
If you follow the above tips, your staff members should be motivated and in a positive mindset to be productive.