5 ways to inspire people and create a more engaged, productive team

Research earlier this year suggested employee engagement in the US remains low. A July survey by Gallup found just 32% of workers are actively engaged, and as many as 16% feel actively disengaged.

The researcher suggests engagement trends matter because they are linked to critical business performance outcomes, such as productivity, employee retention, customer service, safety incidents, quality of work, and profitability.

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In short, a successful business keeps its staff engaged. So, what's a great way to keep your team motivated? Five business leaders give their best-practice tips.

1. Give people opportunities to shine

Sophie Gallay, global data and client IT director at retailer Etam, said great managers ensure all their team members are heard and feel visible.

"We're all humans," she said. "Just answering top-down orders is not fulfilling. People need to be heard. They need to be part of the conversation from the start."

Gallay told ZDNET that her solution to this challenge is to involve people in strategy discussions. 

"Maybe not the top strategy with the executive committee, but at least in the discussions on the direction we take to follow the different steps," she said. "I am trying to include the operational teams as much as possible. So, even if they're not part of the meeting, I will ask all my managers to listen to all the feedback because it's super helpful."

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Gallay said teams, not individuals, deliver successful transformation. She ensures everyone is visible and gets credit, not just senior managers like herself, who are the figureheads for large-scale initiatives.

"So, if we have an internal coffee meeting with the business team to explain the data transformation, I won't go," she said. "Instead, it will be a manager of my team representing the data transformation. I want to give space to everyone to showcase the projects they are working towards."

2. Create a strong sense of purpose

James Fleming, CIO at the Francis Crick Institute, said the best way to motivate people is to give them great projects to work on.

"I try to give them good problems, which isn't a problem at the Crick," he said, referring to the fact that the institute is one of Europe's biggest biomedical labs and home to more than 1,500 scientists working to cure diseases.

"After many, many years of working with engineers and technologists, what motivates them more than anything else is working on good problems that are interesting, innovative, require them to learn new skills, and also give them a sense of purpose."

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Fleming told ZDNET the big benefit of working for the Crick is people go to work every day and can feel they're helping to cure cancer and other human diseases.

However, while those long-term aims create a fantastic sense of purpose, he said people must have short-term objectives to achieve along the way.

"You've got to break that work down into small chunks that say, 'This is why we're solving this problem today, and this is how it relates to a much bigger problem and opportunity,'" he said. "And when people see that connection between the work they're doing today and the long-term goal, I think creating motivation becomes much more straightforward."

3. Use creative techniques

Debra Bonomi, head of learning and development at Rakuten Advertising, said the key to motivating people is to keep things creative.

"Get people to think, 'What could you create versus predict? What do you want to do and have never been given the authority or power to do?'" she said.

Bonomi told ZDNET that managers should find new ways to get people to think about creative answers to those questions.

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For example, she's encouraging people to think creatively by running a course on Loonshots, a management book by Safi Bahcall that shows professionals how certain conditions can help foster innovation.

"I'm rolling out a book club to get people to start having fun," she said. "It's a different way of learning and looks to reinforce skills that aren't necessarily in a traditional course."

Each session in the company-wide book club focuses on the chapters in the book, and the discussions encourage people to think about their priorities. 

"We'll consider questions like, 'What are your loonshots? What do you want to do? And how can we help you start framing that idea and make it happen?'"

4. Help staff complete a bigger puzzle

Gerard Francis, firmwide product head for data and analytics at JP Morgan Chase and head of Fusion by JP Morgan, is another business leader who said the best way to motivate people is to give them exciting work.

"I think people like delivering value," he said. "If you're going fast and delivering value, and you see your work's impact on clients, I think those things excite clever people."

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Francis told ZDNET that the most interesting work often involves working on big projects, even if the individual component you're responsible for is just one part of a larger puzzle.

"It's hard to do the good stuff in small pieces. Success often comes from solving big problems and having different teams contribute to the solution," he said. "I think people feel like they're on a good journey when they see the value of how a big problem gets solved by all the teams interoperating together."

5. Encourage people to become experts

Sasha Jory, CIO at insurance firm Hastings Direct, said successful managers give people opportunities to learn new things through hands-on experiences, especially the benefits of digital transformation.

"It's about always bringing new technology to the fore and giving people the chance to learn about it," she said. "They need to have the time to improve their skill sets. I think that's a big motivator -- and working with new technology is a real motivator for people in the tech industry."

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She told ZDNET that a good example of that learning process was her company's shift to Azure when it moved its applications into the cloud.

"We did work with EY [Ernst & Young] and Microsoft, but I also worked with my existing technology team. They went from knowing nothing about the technology to being able to move all our applications into the cloud," she said. "Some of them are now absolute experts. And that's all self-learned and self-taught. They've been allowed to do that on the job. It's amazing how great people can be if you give them the chance."