How to motivate your remote employees

We all have our own personal motivations that drive us in our work. In order for us to get up every day and dedicate time to our work, there has to be something worth the effort.

Of course, this motivation can vary from person to person. Some of us are financially motivated, others want to get that next promotion, and others want to generally improve. When you find out what truly motivates each of your employees, you can use that fact to drive them forward and achieve their goals. That is the secret!

Ultimately, team members are more engaged, determined, and motivated when they can achieve their dreams and desires. But unfortunately, the way managers meaningfully reward performance is at an all-time low.

According to the Gallup report "Re-Engineering Performance Management," only about 2 in 10 workers agree that "their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do great work"1. There's a lot of room for improvement here, so where should we start?

Types of motivations

To begin the conversation about motivating your remote employees, let's first take a look at the two basic types of motivation that people have.

Intrinsic motivations are, as the name suggests, desires and needs that come from a person themselves. Your employees behave this way because they find it personally rewarding. They are motivated to do their actions because the behavior itself is a reward for them. Some examples of intrinsic motivation include studying a topic deeply because you are deeply interested in it, or working overtime to support a colleague because you take pride in helping others.

Extrinsic motivations, on the other hand, arise from external sources, i.e. H. we engage in an activity or behavior because we receive a reward for it. This reward could be praise from our boss, money for overtime, or on the other side of the spectrum, to avoid punishment. This type of motivation is very useful when it comes to helping people complete tasks that they don't enjoy or have much interest in. For example, your boss might give you a bonus to encourage you to take a course you have no interest in.

Determine what motivates your employees

So the best way to use this new information is to find out what actually drives each employee. This way you can motivate them much more effectively than through rewards, feedback or other incentives that don't really interest or engage them. To do this, you need to take the time to get to know your team members on a more personal level, both in their work and personal lives.

If you have the opportunity (or take the time if you are constantly busy), talk to each employee about topics that are not related to their work but to their personal life. You can do this organically or set up “get-to-know-you” meetings if you want to make the process more formal.

Virtual coffee parties are a great way to do this without sounding too unpleasant to each person, taking 15 minutes to break up the day for a little chat. Of course, we can't just run into each other at the coffee machine in the distant area, so it's best to arrange a small meeting. Do this early in your working relationship rather than figuring things out later. This way you have more time to motivate and build a real personal relationship.

"Motivation is not something we give to people - motivation is something people already have. Employees inherently have energy, ideas, gifts and talents that are worth sharing with the world. We as leaders must Just get out of their way and create a space in which these energy, ideas, gifts and talents can flourish. The question we should ask ourselves is not: "How can I motivate my team? but rather: How can I create an environment in which my team members can motivate themselves?"

Claire Lew - CEO von Know Your Team

Set goals and milestones

After you've taken the time to find out a little more about each employee, you can organize a more formal conversation to set goals and milestones together. Doing this together and not from above can also increase motivation. Arrange a 1:1 conversation if your company doesn't already have one, and set clear goals with rewards that are attractive to each person.

You can simply ask them what motivates them for their work and combine that with what you already know about them. If you engage with your employees and involve them in the decision-making process, you will achieve much more approval and acceptance.

Team amenities and rewards

We recommend that you conduct similar exercises and meetings with your team leaders and senior employees. These positions naturally attract those who enjoy leadership and receive clear intrinsic rewards from helping others. By going through the same process of setting goals for your teams, setting up milestones, and discussing potential rewards, you will not only motivate yourself, but the entire team.

As leaders, they are more able to motivate their colleagues in a more personal way than you can. They work with these people every day and probably know them better than you do. This puts them in the perfect position to pass on this motivation.

"At Strategyzer, we offer an annual growth allowance that team members can use for conferences, courses, coaching and certifications. This allows individuals to explore opportunities for growth and improvement in their role. Our annual book allowance gives team members the opportunity to assign helpful reading material buy that promotes their development and teaches them new skills. We also provide an external coach who is there for whatever our team wants to work on, be it on themselves or the people they work with the most. These “perks,” coupled with constant encouragement for conversations and sacred spaces for those discussions, allow us to proactively foster team motivation.”

Kavi Guppta - Driver of culture and growth at Strategyzer.

Cultivate a culture of openness among one another

Honesty and straightforwardness should be a cornerstone of every company's internal culture. This is even more important for us remote workers because we don't have as many opportunities to figure things out on our own as one would in an office.

Many remote companies implement a 30/60/90 onboarding check-in process for new employees, and you should too. This is also the perfect place to implement what we discussed above when setting personal goals and milestones. You also have the distinct advantage of being able to do this at the beginning of your working relationship with this employee.

But that doesn't mean it should stay that way! This open behavior can continue in the future with an entire remote team. We all work a lot as individuals outside of the office, but at the end of the day we mostly work together as a team. So why not continue these check-ins, but at a team level?

Make a conscious effort to hold longer check-in sessions once a month to get a sense of everyone's satisfaction and progress and to check pulses. Assess motivation, set new goals, discuss rewards, and repeat in the future.

The secret of motivation is not that difficult!

Only by motivating our external employees can we get them to be truly committed to their work. While you can support an employee's intrinsic motivation, as an employer it's easier to offer extrinsic help wherever you can. This top tip will help you get a lot more out of the teams you work on. You can use rewards to incentivize good behavior when necessary and also reward employees' intrinsic motivation. But only by taking the time to get to know each employee can you truly do this.

We mentioned that this process can be done with team leaders, but that is only part of the entire motivation cycle. Spend time with each individual, learn about their passions and what drives them, and then act on your insights. You'll soon find that everyone feels much more valued and that your remote teams are performing better than ever before.