Motivation and Rewards Are Essential to a High Functioning Workforce

While there are many moving parts to properly managing a workforce, it’s the soft skills – the ability to understand and motivate people – that often makes the distinction between a successful manager and an unsuccessful one. Motivating people properly requires a bit of psychology.

Everyone Wants to Be Valued

When workers and their efforts are valued, they’ll become more engaged with their jobs. Their satisfaction and productivity will rise, and they’ll be motivated to maintain or improve their good work. They’ll make an effort to exceed their previous work. Praise and recognition are essential to an outstanding workplace, but managers need to understand how to do it so that it retains its value. People want to be respected and valued by others for their contribution. If the recognition is undeserved, however, it will lose value.

Personalize Your Employee Rewards

Not all workers want the same thing, and generic rewards don’t really say, “I’m proud of you.” Take the time to make a list of what you think would motivate each employee the most, so you have a database to refer to when it’s time to recognize an employee. Workers will appreciate the recognition more when it fits them personally. (In other words, don’t give movie passes to people who don’t go to the movies.)

Other tips for ensuring employees feel valued include:

Preferential scheduling. In the call center, it’s impossible to deny that there are favorable shifts and unfavorable shifts. It’s often newbies who are picked for the shifts that no one wants, but maybe it’s time to rethink this strategy. First pick of the shifts could be one of the rewards you offer employees for a job well done. This could also apply to vacation scheduling. While everyone wants to take time off on the 3^rd of July and the 5^th of July, not everyone can be permitted to do so. Tie in the choice of vacation times to performance.

Putting some fun in teamwork. Many call centers lighten up the atmosphere by building challenges around excellent work. You could craft a kind of “Call Center Survivor” in which teams compete to meet the challenge of the day (fewest call transfers, for example). Add prizes to the competition for some excitement, and acknowledge the winning team on a board in a visible area.

Use customer feedback. If you’re surveying customers after-the-fact, or sending them to an online site to post feedback, collect any positive comments related to an individual agent or team’s work. Put these quotes on your “Hall of Fame” board, social media page or even the bulletin board in the break room.

Find ways to recognize the stragglers. While it’s easy to recognize your top performers, look for better-than-average efforts in your less-stellar achievers, and highlight them. (“Most improved,” for example.) Middling workers can often be turned into above average employees with the right kind of praise and encouragement. 

Edited by Maurice Nagle