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How to Help Employees Fall in Love With Work Again

By Augusta Henning posted 02-25-2020 04:20

  

Let’s face it, we spend a lot of time at work, so it just isn’t sustainable if any of us hate our jobs; let alone your highly valued employees. Whether it’s unhelpful colleagues, or a pushy manager, when work becomes too stressful it can seriously affect someone’s mental health; potentially forcing them to leave the company. 

There are lots of reasons why team members can fall out of love with their role. They may have grown tired of the work they’re doing, feel demotivated due to a lack of progression, or even feel lonely as long-term colleagues move on to other organizations.  

As their employer, you have a duty of care for your staff. So, it’s important to do everything you can to help them feel content and happy in their role.  

If any of the above sounds familiar, read on for some tips on how you can help your staff fall back in love with work again. 

Maximize the Positives 

Before you make any drastic changes to your company culture or management style, take a second to think about why your staff fell in love with the job in the first place. Your employees came on board for a reason, so try to understand what drew them to the role when they first started.  

Maybe it was the thrill of meeting a strict deadline or helping a customer with a product. It doesn’t matter how small or menial it may seem, if your employee enjoys doing it, make sure they do it more frequently.   

Find it out by sitting down with them and making  a list of everything they enjoy about their job. That way, you can find out what makes them tick and help improve their experience at work.  

Alongside this, make sure you’re celebratingtheir hard work. Everyone wants to feel valued, and this is a great place to start. 

Play to Their Strengths 

We all get a kick from completing a task to a great standard, and your employees are no different. However, as team members lose enthusiasm for their role, it’s common for their quality of work to drop too; making it harder to achieve previous levels of success.  

If you’re trying to reignite an employee’s passion for their role, it can be useful to focus on the little wins and play to your employees’ strengths. For example, if a specific employee is notoriously good at client presentations, why not assign them more of these tasks to help boost their professional self-esteem.  

However, don’t forget to talk to your employees if they’re struggling with certain tasks. By offering support and guidance you can help them turn a weakness into strength; and boost their confidence in the process. 

Experiencing success at work is a great way to help employees fall in love with their job again. So, if you want to improve retention rates and the happiness of your team, be sure to delegate more tasks that play to their strengths! 

Set Targets 

Another common reason why people fall out of love with their job is due to a lack of progression. Whether they’re a seasoned veteran in the workplace, or a new team member, not having a set of clear objectives can strip your team of ambition and drive.  

Everyone works better if they’ve got something to aim for and you’ll show that you care about their career by constantly helping to make their job enjoyable and challenging.  

To achieve this, you need to start setting targets for your employees. These should be manageable goals that can help them progress in their career. Regardless of the targets they have, these should be tailored to every individual and act as a motivator for each of your team members.   

By regularly hitting achievable yet challenging targets, your employees will rediscover their motivation and drive. Ultimately, this should encourage them to love their jobs again.  

Assess and Aid Career Progression 

It’s all well and good setting targets. But in order to truly re-engage your staff, you need to assess their progress.  

To do this, make sure you pencil in regular meetings with your team, perhaps on a monthly or quarterly basis, to discuss their progress. During these catchups, you can identify key areas where they can improve and offer advice to those who want to take the next step.  

Where it’s appropriate, you can even assign more responsibilities or offer promotions to individuals that really stand out. You’ll be harnessing an employee’s true potential, while also showing them that you value their development. This is essentially a win-win for all parties involved. 

By showing your staff that you care about their progression enough to help them along the way, you’ll not only build a positive company culture, but hopefully encourage your employees to love their job again.  

Encourage Socializing 

If an employee’s closest work friends have moved on and you're constantly onboarding fresh faces, this can be very isolating for existing members of staff.  

Having genuine friendships at work is part of what makes a job enjoyable. So, if your team are lacking these connections then it’s inevitable that they’ll be unhappy. Unfortunately, you can’t force your employees to be friendly with one another, but you can put plans in place to foster these relationships.  

By organizing social events like seasonal parties, company drinks and lunches, you’ll encourage staff to socialize more. You can also introduce a buddy system during the onboarding process.  

You never know, your staff may have more in common with their newest colleagues than they think! 

Help Your Staff Love Their Job Again 

It’s important for your team members to love their job. Not only does it improve their performance, but also their general wellbeing. No-one should be in a position where their passion and drive are fading and they’re dreading coming into work. 

If you want to make a change and stick to it, it’s vital that you implement these tips. You might not notice an improvement in your staff’s enthusiasm or your retention rates overnight. But, following these steps and changing your approach as a manager is the best way to help your staff fall in love with their job again.  

Of course, these changes may not work for everyone. Your employees may still be unhappy, and ultimately decided to leave.  If this is the case, don’t worry, there are plenty of talented candidates

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03-25-2020 14:04

Great ideas. Make people remember why they wanted to the job in the first place. Thanks for posting.