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How to Motivate Your Team While Working Remotely

Everyone seems to agree that these are unusual times to live through. Both businesses and schools are working remotely, and many of the people working remotely are losing their motivation. Here are a few questions to ask your managers. How Are You Measuring Success? Some employees may be working just enough to cross that “t” … Continued
Aaron Durall Esquire

Aaron Durall Esquire

2 Min Read

by Aaron Durall, Esquire

Everyone seems to agree that these are unusual times to live through. Both businesses and schools are working remotely, and many of the people working remotely are losing their motivation. Here are a few questions to ask your managers.

How Are You Measuring Success?

Some employees may be working just enough to cross that “t” and dot that “i”. If they do that, their job is secure and their paycheck will be in the mail by Friday. You might want to take a survey to find out what matters to your employees. If you find out what matters to your employees, you can encourage them to experiment, which is shown to improve employee motivation up to 45%.

How Can You Break Up the Time?

Doing the same thing repetitively can absorb employee motivation very quickly. There are several ways to build variety into what people do every day. One option is to schedule certain work or routines for certain days. For example, a manager can have a department or office-wide meeting on Monday to discuss the big picture of the week, whatever that might be. Tuesday and Thursday can be days for problem-solving between workers, either formally in a meeting or informally through email or Slack. Friday can be used to power through the end of projects or general reflection on ways to improve.

How Can You Provide Purpose?

Everyone wants to know that the work they are doing matters or will be useful at a later date. In education, teachers are expected to lay the groundwork of skills/knowledge that will be used or referenced later in the year. In business, a manager can provide purpose by presenting their employees with a problem and following through with the suggested solutions. If those suggestions do not work, then the manager can brainstorm with the employees why the solutions did not or could not work.

Finding motivation when there is not a physical workspace can be challenging. However, a good manager is always trying to find a purpose for their employees, as well as breaking up time into effective chunks to work on a project, and how to measure the success of a project.