How to motivate your staff in the new year

There are several actions you can take.

© Paul Vasarhelyi – 123RF.com

Keep your post-holiday blues under wraps

Firstly, it would be wise not to expose your staff to your own post-holiday blues. There is nothing as demotivating as a manager who is themselves unwilling to work and takes their frustration out on their staff. Remember it is likely everyone else feels the same way.

Be spontaneous

This is also an excellent time to be spontaneous. If you feel like taking a break, take one, but involve your staff in the relaxation. You can even extend such celebrations to the rest of the year. Have one party for all the staff who have a birthday in the month and organise regular alcohol-free happy hours where everyone can get to know each other. Make every event something to look forward to.

If you really want to personalise the event and create incentives for good work at the same time, hand out awards to people who have really excelled during the last month.

Pull through on your promises: don't offer incentives but not reward people at the end of the day.

In your staff meetings, focus on the positives that came out of the previous year at first instead of upon failures. Certainly a fall in profit, for example, would be counted as a failure, but rather point out how well the team worked together. Deal with the difficult subjects directly when it is clear your staff are ready to give you their all.

Give your employees the opportunity to have a say in decisions made. This could also be a sneaky way of dealing with the previous year's failures: instead of talking them down regarding a particular spot in the business that requires work, ask them constructively for ideas on how to deal with it. Thus, instead of expressing your disappointment in the profit fall, ask your staff for ideas on how to increase your takings in the coming year.

Look at promoting some of your staff early on in the year, or give them greater responsibility - this will show them that you have confidence in their abilities despite their lethargy and will motivate them to give you their best, not only in the beginning of the year but for the rest of it, too.

Lastly, give your staff members clear targets to work towards. The combination of post-holiday lethargy with an uncertainty of what is required of them will only make it more difficult to motivate them later on.