Motivation is essential to the success of any business. Most managers take this into account when putting together a team; in an ideal world, you’ll search for and hire or select people that are as excited as you about your project.
However, we leave in the real world. Even if you build the best team possible, most workers at some point experience a decrease in productivity. As a boss or mananger, you might be wondering how to bring back that first-day-at-work feeling.
Thankfully, team-oriented task management software can help you with this. Check below for eight creative solutions you can implement right now and boost the performance of your team.
1. Make it personal
A big mistake many entrepreneurs make is seeing their team as a homogenous whole. The more their company grows, the less direct contact they have with their employees, only addressing them during all-hands meetings. And it can demotivate even the best minds.
Smart task management, however, can minimize it. With Gryffin, you can assign tasks, define permissions, and have conversations individually.
Yes, you can do it with groups as well. But you can use the tool to create one-to-one interactions, which will turn into excellent opportunities. You will discover hidden skills and be able to adapt tasks to each team member so that they can be executed at their best.
2. Make it rewarding
Fun doesn’t seem to have much to do with projects and tasks. But your daily activities don’t have to be boring either. For instance, you can use gamification to keep your team motivated. And you don’t need to turn your project into a video game. It’s all about the thrill and the reward.
To start simple, suggest that everyone who meets their deadlines over the week will get something in return. Use Gryffin to verify who has achieved the pre-defined goal within seconds. Just be sure that the rules are clear to everyone. Otherwise, it can backfire.
3. Make it flexible
Some tasks are repetitive by nature, but you still need them done. Invoicing, reporting, and filing forms are three of the most mentioned in this category. Talk about motivation here is an extra challenge. But you can do it by making it flexible.
Let your employees set their own schedules so they can deal with these type of tasks as they prefer. To ensure you will receive what and when you expect, offer clear guidelines, set the priority, and fix the due date on your team task management software. But leave the rest up to them.
4. Make it inspiring
Employees like to know that what they do has value, and not only for themselves. They want to be part of something bigger, to support the company’s growth. And your task management software can help you to inspire them.
With Gryffin’s Project hub, you can add the goal of your task to its description. Given then the “why”, as much as the “what” and “how.” Use the fields to motivate your team, letting them know the relevance of what they are doing, and how important it is that the task is completed.
5. Make it balanced
Many team members are underperforming these days due to burnout. They work more hours than they should and end up delivering poor quality projects. As a consequence, they decide to work even more hours to the point of exhaustion.
End this cycle by showing your team you believe that time off improves productivity. Add break time to their schedules through your team’s task management software.
Create tasks whose sole goal is to relax for a set period of time every day. Make a requirement that they check those tasks off with the same diligence they would have for other tasks.
6. Make it bonding
Everyone needs human contact, even in small doses. But being in front of a screen all day long tends to isolate people, even when they are working in a crowded room. Others are delivering tasks remotely, from their home, or while commuting or traveling.
Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to avoid this. But you can create opportunities for your team to interact withing your task or project management tool.
Gryffin does this in many ways: you can use the chat, create a meeting, send emails, and collaborate with Google Docs. All within your project hub.
7. Make it transparent
Another thing that motivates people is transparency. Working in an environment where you don’t know what is going on or you aren’t informed about the big picture makes people insecure and suspicious. But you can solve this by setting up your task tracking in the right way.
Gryffin gives you complete control of user permissions. You can let your team members read or edit (or both) as much or as little as you want.
You will be able to configure permissions to each person, according to what they need to know to perform better. And you can change the settings at any time.
8. Make it fair
Many employees will decrease in productivity if they think their project manager isn’t fair with them—for instance, if they are receiving more tasks than they can handle. Use your task management software to avoid this and correct issues.
Keep a close eye on your reports and live overview. You might notice that someone is overbooked just by comparing their performance over previous weeks.
If you are using Gryffin, you can drag and drop a task on the Dashboard to easily extend the due date. You can also change priority or assign the task to another team member.
Choosing the Right Team Task Management Software
A comprehensive, team collaboration platform like Gryffin can be all you need to keep your team motivated. You can use it to turn boring and repetitive activities into fun goals, let them know the big picture, and improve interactivity.
You will also want to watch each task and employee individually to make the most of them and their skills. What looks like an increase in your workload gets much easier once you have a tool that gives you the features you need. And the results will be there for you to see very soon.