With such a high from the festivities over the Christmas period, the new year can often lead to mixed emotions. At first everyone feels the buzz of the “new year, new me” mantras but before long you may be feeling overwhelmed. This uneasy feeling at the start of the new year has often been coined the ‘January blues’.
Similar to winter blues, the cold weather and short days get to us, but January blues also get us down with Christmas debts and seeing less of friends and family as everyone goes back to their busy schedules. With such a change, January can feel like the dullest month of the year, so it’s no wonder that people can find themselves feeling low and gloomy.
These feelings not only affect our mood but also our work ethic and productivity. This is why it is so important to have a good support system in place at work to power you and your workers through January. Indeed, a motivated team creates the best results for a company because members are more productive and go above and beyond; for example, research from Gallup found companies with a highly engaged workforce are 21% more profitable.
At Myles Wellbeing, we have researched the best ways to motivate your team through January to make sure that your employee’s wellbeing is considered all year round, particularly during the harder wintry months.
1. Manageable goals
Setting goals which have purpose is definitely key to motivating any employee. Not only does it give a worker a manageable to-do list, but ensures that all workers are on the same page.
At the start of the new year it is super important to have extreme clarity on what you’re working towards as a team and why. This clarity is so important because teams can only be motivated by a goal if they know what the goal is. These goals can help you plan the new year with your team, and they are also useful to come back to when assessing how much your team has achieved when the year is over.
2. Offer flexible working hours
Recent data released showed that in 2022, around 4.27 million employees in the United Kingdom had contracts which allowed flexible working hours. This makes flexible working the most common working practice in that year. It’s so popular as it allows employees to find a way that works best for them, allowing them to be more productive and motivated.
3. Promote teamwork
A sense of community is key to maintaining motivation in the workplace because if everyone is working together then you will motivate each other to complete your team goals. Indeed, regular team building is really useful, either through group chats where you share random thoughts and daily encounters or meet-ups outside the normal workspace.
Apps, such as our own Myles Wellbeing, are also great for team building. With a leaderboard, you can compete with your work friends in a fun and (quite literally) rewarding way, allowing you to find your top three athletes in your workplace whilst ensuring you also reward the most improved employees, not just the fittest. Such an app also promotes the importance of physical activity which has great benefits to the workplace including higher productivity, a reduction in sick days and an increased retention.
4. Praising achievement big and small
It is certainly important to praise accomplishments both big and small as often the mini milestones add up and produce fantastic results. In particular, at the start of the year, it is good to recognise what is working well for your team and work out together how to keep up what is successful.
Assessing achievements is also very beneficial to any employer. If a smaller milestone took longer than expected, communicate with your employee to see if there were any problems. Not only will your employee feel valued, especially if it is a smaller issue, but you can both work out a solution, creating, in the long run, a better team around you.
5. Get out of the office
A great way to motivate your employees is by having team time outside of the office– especially after the festivities of the Christmas period, this team time provides workers something to look forward to. If you are a remote worker, benefits such as quarterly team events outside of the office are especially desirable to break up their usual routine and get them out of the house. Many employees and employers alike often report that events like these really help to improve overall camaraderie and team spirit, so it’s worth implementing such a benefit to motivate your team.