5 Ways to Motivate Your Technical Team
If you manage a technical team in any capacity you’ll be acutely aware of how skilled, detailed, and essential their role is. The technical industry is candidate driven which means job seekers are in the driving seat and employers must fight off fierce competition in order to attract the best talent.
Once that talent is secured at your company, your job is far from over. You need to ensure you work extremely hard to keep your employees engaged and motivated, otherwise they’ll up and leave, putting you back at square one.
Here are five ways you can keep your technical team motivated and prevent a high team turnover.
Don’t Just Focus on Money
It’s easy to assume that money will keep someone motivated, but this isn’t the case. In fact, a study by Tim Judge, that looked at over 120 years of research, found that pay and job satisfaction only have a 2% overlap. Furthermore, the SHL Workers and Good Management Study found that just 20% of employees admitted to being motivated by money, and researcher Susan David found that just 4% of employees she independently surveyed cited money as a driving force for their performance.
Of course, paying your employees well will certainly go some way to retaining them and showing them that they’re appreciated, but it’s not the be all and end all. Discrepancies in money amongst employees can actually cause friction within your team, so don’t rely on it as a sole motivator because it could have the adverse effect.
Pay your employees competitively, but don’t pin your hopes of excellent performance, engagement, and satisfaction on salaries alone.
Recognise Their Achievements
Employees across all sectors respond well to recognition. Highlighting when a team member has done something good will give them a confidence boost and make them more likely to want to work harder in the future.
Not just this, but employee recognition can improve staff retention, better the working environment, increase bonding, and boost productivity as a whole. Not only will your tech team benefit from a pat on the back and public recognition every now and again, but so will the business as a whole. With this in mind, make sure you make an effort to recognise everyone’s achievements, no matter how big or small.
Be Transparent and Clear in Communication
If your employees feel like the lines of communication to you are absent, they won’t be motivated to do better. By fostering an environment of clear communication and full transparency, you’ll be able to build trust with your technical team which can lead to better productivity, morale, empowerment, and motivation.
Provide Training and Growth Opportunities
According to research, a lack of career growth is one of the leading reasons why technical employees leave their jobs. In practical terms, no one wants to be stuck in the same stagnant role for years. By investing in your employees and providing training opportunities and skill development options, it will motivate them to perform better as they seek to climb to the next step on their career ladder.
Offer Perks and Incentives
Sometimes, it’s the smallest things that can make the biggest difference. From increased annual leave and flexible working hours to a pre-paid gym membership and dental care packages, people respond well to add-ons. Before you implement job perks, it’s worth asking what your team would value the most to ensure you are incentivising them in a way that they’ll appreciate.
Expand Your Technical Team
If you’d like to find out more about how BMS Performance can help you attract technical talent and keep your existing team motivated, please contact us.
