Team Engagement. How to keep your team engaged? You’ve hired great people and are ready to delegate and lead your virtual team. Now what? How do you keep them working hard? It’s about motivation and helping your team stay excited about working with you and engaged in the project.
Share Your Vision
It is crucial to start off on the right foot when you bring people onto your team. Ensure that they know what your mission and vision are, the goals that they need to be aware of so they can be excited as well about the project. Aside from telling them about what this can do for your business, mention also the benefits that these projects you have can give to your clients and prospects. People get motivated by various things. Some of them will get excited about helping you and your business succeed, while there will be others who can get motivated by helping your clients and prospects. By sharing your vision for the project, you help tap into that motivation and excitement.
Say Thank You for Better Team Engagement
When you are grateful for all the help, you are letting your team know that you are respectful of their efforts. Saying “thank you” is something that is easy to do and it goes a long way. Make it part of your communications, and it’s always nice to say “please” too. Though your team is getting paid to do their job, it’s still good to express your gratitude.
Be Available and Responsive
Being present will keep your team engaged and excited. When they need your help, they have questions, or they simply want to touch base, be available for their communications and respond quickly. An easy way to get this done is to develop a communication system. For example, if you’re going to use email then make sure to give your team members an email that you check often. And respond positively and enthusiastically. Exhibit the mindset and characteristics that you want to see in your team.
Provide Incentives
There are a number of different ways that you can incentivize your team. They include, but aren’t limited to:
- Give Incentives – Don’t pay your team before they do their job. What you can do is give them a deposit. But it would also help for them to be more productive if you also pay for every milestone they achieve.
- Pay On Time – If you have a long-term virtual assistant that you are paying, make sure you pay them on time. It affects their enthusiasm when payment is delivered late.
- Consider Bonuses – Did a contractor do an exceptional job? Did they go above and beyond? Pay them a bonus as a thank you. They could be very much motivated to continue delivering excellent work for you.
- Refer Them to Others – When you refer your team members to others, they get excited. Try to connect with them online and offer them endorsements and testimonials for them to get more clients.
- Plan Future Work – Another thing that will keep them excited is when you talk to them about projects and tasks that you plan to do in the future with them. Many of them will value repeat and ongoing business and most often enjoy working with the same client.
- Share Good News – In the event that you have good news about a project or a task that your team is working on, share the news with them. Make them feel like they’re really a part of your community.
Managing a virtual team is about more than assigning tasks and paying invoices. It’s about building relationships and supporting people to be their best. When you hire great people and they produce exceptional results, your business prospers.