Employee Motivation: 8 Techniques to Employ For Remarkable Results
According to a survey from Campaign, 70% of agency employees are “actively job seeking.” Wow, that is a very large number. These agencies need more attention to small business employee motivation, don’t they?
And the agency world is not their only option. Competition from high-growth tech firms, startups, and other creative industries combined with traditionally low agency salaries is causing agency executives to look at recruiting as their #1 priority.
If agencies want to remain competitive, they need to understand what in-demand talent wants, how to create a culture of retention, how to train up young talent, and how to drive qualified candidates to their agencies — all in an effort of attracting and keeping great creatives, skilled digital marketers, and experienced professionals that clients want to work with.
Let’s consider some more factors to motivate employees:
Learning opportunities and a culture where people feel engaged, supported, and encouraged are all important, but those are obvious.
Beyond that, agency leaders must make time to develop their talents’ careers. We must take the lead in initiating conversations to reaffirm that we are listening and that their growth is important to us. It’s not just about average conversations; it’s about getting out of the office, grabbing a cup of coffee, and making the conversation more personal.
People need to understand their opportunities for growth as they often leave when they don’t know what’s next. Managing expectations and providing a roadmap for growth and advancement is sometimes all it takes. Knowing they have a mentor, coach, or even just an ear goes a tremendous way.
When good people leave because they didn’t know their career path, shame on us. We should have listened.
Open, fun culture
An open, fun-oriented culture is where people are empowered to act instead of waiting to be told what to do. A place where people can be themselves and are encouraged to pursue outside interests and passions (it’s what makes ours an interesting business).
As long as people are doing the work, they must be given the freedom to live vital lives.
Ability to make a difference
Top talent wants to know that their expertise and their efforts matter. They are driven to produce results, but it’s more than that. They want to be part of the decision-making process for the company as a whole as well as for the clients they work with.
There must be a well-defined path for growth, responsibility, and compensation, but maybe more important is an open line of communication with senior management. It’s equally important for them to keep the lines open with the employees they manage as well. This is how they earn the respect of co-workers and the role of leader in the agency.
Small business employee motivators … autonomy
Far and away, autonomy matters most to top talent. At the best companies, that means having a voice in the direction of your career and of the business as a whole. It means having the flexibility to do the job where and when it makes sense for you as a person, parent, or employee. And it means being empowered to push for great work knowing the company will have your back.
Responsibility and task ownership
Our top team members want more responsibility and to be able to contribute to the growth of the business in a meaningful way. They want their ideas to be heard and executed. They also want a wide-open career path with lots of options for advancement.
The key to recruiting and maintaining top industry talent is a company’s culture. Whether it’s individual training and development, leadership programs, or all-inclusive town hall meetings with agency leaders — everything the business does should be in pursuit of making talent and their work better. At our small agency, we’ve built our space around the tenets of our culture, remodeling our offices to an open and collaborative workspace. It’s now a breeding ground for interaction, creativity, and innovation.
As agencies like ours grow exponentially with new employees, the main goal in talent recruitment and onboarding should be a focus on maintaining the agency culture by immersing new employees in what the agency stands for as a brand. A true agency culture provides the kind of definition, commitment, and context people are hungry for. It’s a big reason why people want to come to work at an agency.
Growth and development
Many agencies, have been very successful in attracting good talent, but more importantly, developing great talent. They are finding smart people who already live and love those markets is where we start. Internship programs have been a key component of their success.
Open, collaborative environment
Top talent wants ownership of projects, an open, collaborative environment, the ability to solve things on the fly, to work with clients who want a true agency partnership, the time to work on a cause-related issue, or a passion project with a company backing, and a work-life balance. People want to feel like they have time to pursue their own interests.
The bottom line
Employee motivators don’t happen on their own, do they? If you work hard at hiring the best, you must spend the time to motivate and develop them or they won’t stay.
Need some help in finding ways to hire the best employees? Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential competitors? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your continuous learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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