Within your business, motivating your team should always be a top priority. Each individual within your team represents your company values, and they need to be inspired to work efficiently. Whether your team seeks motivation in team building, or through constructive feedback, there are many techniques that leaders can use to motivate teams.
When it comes to successful fleet procurement, your team isn't just those within the procurement department; you need to consider your team as every individual who helps to achieve your end goals. Motivating your team at work includes anyone from the fleet administrator and drivers and fuel card users, to the fleet managers and owners. In procurement, every individual in your organisational hierarchy contributes to the overall mission and values. Therefore building relationships with colleagues is of high importance with many benefits.
Here, we take a look at ten techniques that leaders can use to motivate teams. After all, how can your team be expected to meet your companies goals when they don't feel inspired?
1. Keep your team in the know
A motivated team is one that feels confident and comfortable with any changes or developments within the business. As a leader, it's your responsibility to make sure that your team understands your organisations most recent priorities, goals, key statistics and any changes that can impact or improve the business performance. Keeping your team updated is easily achievable through a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly email sent to all team members. For instance, once you have a procurement strategy developed, your team should be informed of key updated strategy details to ensure that they understand the most accurate objectives they are working towards.
2. Define clear goals
Motivating your team at work by taking the time to ensure each member clearly understands your organisation's goals and objectives, is key. Don't do this by putting individuals on the spot during team meetings or calls. Define your clear goals and expectations by repeating the message often, whether this is written at the beginning of a team email, on social media, or mentioned in a team meeting. The trick is to be consistent. Don't just stop there; when your team is close to or has achieved a goal, it's important to let them know! By doing so, each team member can be proud of their contribution to achieving this goal.
3. Open Communication
One of the most obvious techniques that leaders can use to motivate teams is to encourage communication! Your team needs to feel comfortable to talk, discuss and deliberate daily. Whether this is in person or virtually, ensuring that your team feels that they are free to express their ideas and opinions will make each of them feel valued and motivated. Moreover, a business can feel halted by its hierarchal structure, hence encouraging communication between different departments will result in a more blended organisation. Depending on the size of your immediate team, it might not always be possible for you to interact with all these team conversations. Although, it's possible to ask your team to give you key feedback and positive points from their discussions if they wish.
4. Offer praise and constructive feedback
To be motivated to work hard, your team needs to feel appreciated. To show your appreciation, offering praise on an individual and team level will show to your team or department that you are aware of their contribution to your organisations goals and objectives. Offering positive feedback and constructive criticism will not only aid in motivating your team but will also be a learning point for them to implement.
5. Listen to your team's needs
Communication is a two-way street. An actively listened to team, is a motivated team. Whether that's listening to group feedback or an individual’s suggestion, listening to your team and implementing ideas and solutions to make your teams working life easier will result in positive outcomes.
6. Find time-saving solutions
No employee enjoys completing a task that they know could be more efficient. Finding time-saving solutions for your fleet is important to boost morale.
For example, if your company has a fleet, fleet fuel cards aid in making fleet operations run more efficiently and allow you to budget your fuel costs more effectively. They also make the driver's job easier when it comes to paying for fuel with the pre-loaded fuel card, meaning that there's no need to store receipts and spend time sending them to the fleet administrator. Therefore, keeping your fleet drivers and those who help with the operations happy, without sacrificing budgets to do so!
7. Consider work-life balance
As a leader, you need to recognise when your team is feeling burnt out. It's no secret that low employee morale doesn't produce the best quality of work. Take time to talk to your team about how they are finding their work-life balance. If individuals are struggling, offer the option of flexible working hours or the opportunity to work from home if they are mostly office-based or vice versa to increase motivation and morale.
8. Build good working relationships
Your team will feel more motivated and inspired to work harder when they know that they have a team leader who cares. By taking time to have a conversation to get to know your team members personally, it shows that you appreciate them as more than just a way to reach your organisational goals. By building good working relationships, it makes for a more comfortable working environment for everyone.
9. Get your team involved
With a fleet, your team may be based in different geographical locations, so it can be hard for them to feel connected. Team building activities are a great way to reward your team for their hard work, increase motivation, morale and build relationships. Motivation in team-building aids in successful fleet procurement and can come from many different activities for all to enjoy, from escape rooms and professional driving courses!
10. Positive working environment
A positive working environment is one that is also the most productive. Certainly, it depends on whereabouts your team members are based. In light of COVID-19, working from home is more common, and this can be a situation where individuals feel isolated and lack motivation. For some of your team, they've only ever worked in the office surrounded by their colleagues. Hence, as a leader, it would be best to offer positive advice on creating the ideal home office space and encourage virtual communication through video calls on Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams or Zoom.
Of course, this is not possible with your drivers. However, you can build rapport with fleet drivers and check-in to make sure that they are comfortable or have any questions about their routes, drop-offs and ensuring that drivers can talk to one another.
We hope that these ten techniques that leaders can use to motivate teams will be useful for you. Motivating your team at work and managing relationships is a key area for achieving successful fleet procurement. If you're interested in finding out about fuel cards that are tailored to your drivers, routes and locations, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the Fuelmate team today!
