By Cheryl Kerrigan, VP Employee Success, Achievers
Keeping employee morale and productivity up during the holiday season isn’t easy. Between Thanksgiving and the New Year employees are pulled in many directions, excited—and distracted—with the festivities at work and at home. The key to keeping employees focused, and to continue driving momentum during the last few months of the year is with culture. Managers can engage their teams and keep them productive—and happy—with a few thoughtful steps:
1. Align your team
Do your employees know your company’s mission? More importantly, do you know your company’s mission? If your employee base is aligned to your organization’s mission and business objectives, they’re more likely to stay motivated throughout this busy time of year. When you involve your employees in setting benchmarks for achievable goals, especially as the year winds down, you’ll find they continue delivering the caliber of performance you appreciate the rest of the year. Over communicate individual roles and responsibilities to keep your team aligned, focused, and motivated to succeed.
2. Celebrate success, every day
Embrace the opportunity to celebrate and thank your employees at work, every day. Employees value immediate feedback so make it a daily habit to recognize your employees for a job well done and you’ll begin to see great behaviors repeated. According to Gallup, 80 percent of employees say that recognition is a strong motivator for their work performance, and 70 percent said they would work harder with continuous recognition. There’s really no reason to put it off. Recognition is a great way to motivate your employees to continue driving results through the excitement of the holiday season, and long after.
3. Empower employees to work from anywhere
If work-life balance is important to your company culture (it should be), then the holidays are a great time to prove it. Start by defining goals and making sure employees are clear on your organization’s direction. Next, empower them to work remotely or provide more flexibility with hours, so employees can accommodate for family travel and schedules. Show your employees you trust that they’ll get the job done. They‘ll appreciate the flexibility of completing tasks on their own timeline. Come January, you’ll see a refreshed and re-energized team back in the office, ready to tackle new challenges.
Cheryl is Vice President, Employee Success at Achievers where she is responsible for overall people strategy, which focuses on attracting, retaining, and inspiring top talent. Cheryl brings more than 15 years experience in Human Resources; prior to Achievers, she held an HR Leader position at Eloqua. While at Eloqua, she was responsible for building out the HR function and strategy and attracting and developing the talent to grow the business from 10 million to over 100 million in revenue. Cheryl earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Guelph and a post graduate certificate in Human Resource Management from Seneca College.
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