With the rise of ‘presenteeism’ in the workplace, it may seem increasingly common for a cold to spread through an office. But how about motivation? Much like with a cold, motivation can disappear over time too – and it’s also highly contagious.

Any manager should be able to tell you why a highly motivated workforce is critical for a business. Improved focus, productivity, reduced staff turnover and reducing the risk of employee burnout all spring to mind as standard and recognised benefits of motivated employees.

But how can we motivate staff? And how can we motivate a few to engage the many?

Office set-ups tend to tie into our own evolutionary need to blend in and mimic behaviours of those around us. It’s how we relate to one another and forge a sense of belonging in a group.

This trait was highlighted by a study conducted at the University of Rochester which found that simply placing participants in the same room as a highly motivated individual enhanced their drive and performance. They also found the opposite was true when participants were placed in a room with an unmotivated individual. Inspiration and performance dropped significantly.

What’s intriguing is that participants said that they didn’t feel that the ‘stooge’ already in the room didn’t directly influence their own performance or behaviour. Picking-up motivation, or lack of it, from others, is therefore unconsciously decided. It’s almost secretly contagious.

And motivation en-masse has benefits that stretch far further than the office door. It seeps into company values, service quality, customer relations and retention too.

So, the big question is how can we as managers start a motivation contagion that infects everyone on the work floor?

Here are some simple ways to start the spread:

Display positive vibes

Employees are leader watchers. Especially during periods of disruption, stress or change, staff will look to management for emotional cues as to what might be going on within the business as a whole. This is why positive vibes are so important. Not only can they help alleviate the mood and motivation of employees who might have gotten out of bed on the wrong side that morning, they also show that everything is well, even if it might not be. That positivity spreads too.

Facilitate collaboration

Working as a team promotes trust, peer-to-peer recognition and support, and wider collaboration facilitation can be just as powerful a motivational ploy too. Set time or create tasks that involve the wider team or have hack days where individuals from different staff disciplines learn what other employees do.

Make decisions… and stick to them

A massive bugbear for staff is being led in one direction by management, only for that direction to change further down the line. At a granular level, this could be as simple as tasking a team to create a sales proposal for a pitch, only to tell them a week later that you’ve decided not to pitch for the work after all.

Events like these have a big de-motivating effect on both individual and wider team members who would feel that their time and efforts have counted for nothing.

Set achievable goals and make them timely

Such a powerful motivational tool which is perhaps not used as often as it should be is actually settings goals for individuals and work teams too. Setting goals that are challenging but achievable creates drive, purpose and collaboration and making them timely ensures that focus on achieving set goals doesn’t fade over time.

Setting goals doesn’t only motivate, it helps facilitate a better workflow too. In fact, 63% of employees in one study said they felt like they’d wasted time at work as a result of not knowing what was a priority.

Say no to micromanaging

You’d be hard pressed to find a member of staff who’d say they prefer being micromanaged over being empowered to deliver a task themselves. In fact, nearly half of employees would rather be tasked with unpleasant tasks as opposed to sitting next to a micromanaging boss.

Set those timely and achievable goals, manage set stages of a project and offer expertise, but try and avoid second-guessing every move and decision your staff make.  

Don’t over-reward

It might make sense on the face of it to instantly reward your staff for achieving targets as a result of heightened collective motivation, but doing so could actually have a detrimental effect.

Theories on motivation suggest that if you increase rewards for completing a task that a member of staff actually already enjoys doing and excels at anyway, it can have a de-motivating effect in the long-run.  

First, you should look to appreciate efforts and recognise achievements, but don’t go buying Amazon gift vouchers for every member of your team as soon as they hit the first goal you set.

Keeping the motivation spreading

Fostering wider motivation in the long-run requires constant work and topping up. On top of the points noted above, where you really want to tap into is an individual’s self-motivation – that inner drive to want to succeed, go above and beyond and be successful. That self-motivation typically comes through inspiration, one of the many reasons why truly inspiring leaders are often the ones who can motivate the most.