If you’re a factory manager, then you probably know how important it is to motivate your workers as it has a positive impact on how efficient and productive they are, and thus influences the entire business.
Below we’ve provided a few useful tips and tricks to help you incentivise and motivate your factory staff so you can boost productivity and morale.
Constant communication
It’s important to have open and constructive communication with your staff. Start by giving them feedback and praising good performance, which is a good way to incentivise them, but also listening to their feedback and taking into account any suggestions they may have for improving the overall work environment. No one knows better how to improve a working environment than those who actually work in the environment on a daily basis.
Keep a live scoreboard
It is a known and proven fact that a live scoreboard or dashboard is one of the most effective means of staff motivation. When a team’s speed of working and success or failure rate is displayed live to everyone in the factory, unit or team, it motivates staff beyond any other method.
Offer rewards whenever appropriate
Whether it’s the occasional company party or dinner, a well-deserved bonus for excellent results or putting in place a rewards scheme for your factory staff, any type of reward gives staff an extra incentive and something to work towards. The results always show that incentivised and motivated staff result in an improvement in productivity.
Reduce the risk of repetitive strain injury
Motivating staff can prove to be a challenging task, especially when their job involves mundane, repetitive tasks that may lead to issues such as repetitive strain injury (RSI). (Not sure how high the risk of RSI is in your factory? Download our repetitive strain injury risk assessment form and find out now!) Following this assessment you may find some areas where you can make small changes to reduce the repetitive strain injury risks your workers are exposed to and make their jobs easier or more comfortable.
Update your processes
Use automation to upgrade your factory. This not only helps boost productivity and efficiency significantly, but it’s also a smart way of improving working conditions and creating new, more stimulating roles within the factory. It can often be frustrating for workers to conduct repetitive tasks using outdated machinery and technologies. Therefore by introducing automation to do the repetitive tasks within your factory, and moving staff to more challenging job roles, staff become motivated as they feel they are now working in a modern, up to date, 21st century environment. As we all know, motivated staff results in better productivity which in turn influences the culture of your business and results in an increase to your bottom line.
Encourage training
If possible, it’s good to set aside some time and resources to ensure that your staff are cross-trained within certain areas of your production or throughout your whole factory. This then offers you and your staff more flexibility as you have several staff who are all fully trained to do a particular job. Rotating job roles every shift gives your staff variety which helps to increase job engagement and reduce the risk of repetitive strain injury, whilst reducing the boredom of doing the same repetitive task all day every day.
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