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WS_1452 01154.txt

How to Keep Your Employees Happy While Pushing Them to Their Limitsooner or later you re going to have employees. If you want to create a large company, you ll have no choice but to hire people to help you out. Although hiring employees may sound simple, you ll quickly learn that no one will care for your company as much as you nor will they work as hard as you. Every once in a while you may find some rock star talent to help you out, but those won t be the majority of the people that build up your team. So how do you get people to work really hard? Well, you have to push them to their limits, yet keep them motivated or else they ll get burned out and quit. Here are 7 tactics I use to push employees to their limits while still keeping them motivated and happy. Tactic#1: Encourage and discourage at the same time Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I have a tendency to point out how employees can be working more efficiently, what else they can do for the company, and how they need to be creating more aggressive revenue goals. Over the years I ve quickly learned that critiquing people 4 days a week does help them work harder, but at the same time it can cause them to quit. So every Friday, I make sure I compliment them on how well of a job they are doing and how I am happy to be working with them. I also do the same thing over the weekend through text messages and emails which makes them ecstatic and ready to work hard on Monday. The reason I choose to compliment on Friday is because it usually a deadline day in which everyone is trying to hit all of their weekly goals. So by saying how well of a job they did, it shows that you appreciate them as well as gives them a sense of accomplishment. Tactic#2: Dangle a carrot The best way I m able to motivate employees to work hard while keeping them happy is to dangle a carrot in front of them. For each employee you re going to have to figure out what carrot appeals to him or her most. If you can t figure out what appeals to them, you may want to start with dangling money as most people are looking to move up in their career. For example, I know my assistant wants to make more money, so every month she can push me to close 2 enterprise deals, she gets a decent size bonus. This works well because it not only pushes her to figure out which companies I can sell large contracts to, but it also makes her think about my company financial well being. I have another employee who loves luxury watches. I ve offered to buy him a fancy watch if he is able to get my company an extra 100 qualified leads each day as that will drastically improve the company bottom line. Whatever carrot you decide to dangle, make sure your employee is attached emotionally to it. Playing off of logic is great but dangling carrots that play off of emotions are more effective. Tactic#3: Feed them well Everyone has to eat! So why not feed them? Google and Facebook are just a few of the companies that feed their employees for free and it seems to work well. This way they don t have to leave work to get food and they ll be more productive. If you are starting out you may not be able to provide the level of food services that Google and Facebook provide, but this doesn t mean you can t treat your employees to a nice meal once a month. Or you can tie meals to specific company objectives, such as buying lunch on Fridays for employees after you know they have achieved their weekly goals. When feeding your employees you don t have to pick the fanciest restaurants. Just pick a unique place that has a fun vibe. I have found that those type of places are appreciated much more than the stuffy restaurants that you have to dress up to eat at. Tactic#4: Spontaneity One of the easiest ways to make your employees more productive is to change up the environment they are working in. You can do things like rearranging office furniture, but I prefer changing up the environment by being spontaneous. For example, I have a weekly brainstorming session with 2 marketers whom I work with and we typically brainstorm in my condo. Last week we decided to brainstorm while taking a walk on the harbor, as the weather was nice. The beautiful thing about this is that my guys were able to come up with some awesome marketing ideas and they didn t feel like they were working. Instead they felt like they were just taking a break from work and relaxing by the water The trick with being spontaneous is to do things that your employees wouldn t expect. Like the example above, it can be very simple, and it doesn t have to cost you a dime

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