If you are a technical expert, your staff are a techie too. Managers in the developing team should think about the things that used to motivate and excite them when they were junior or senior software developer. Some similar things experienced before may motivate the staffs today. When you treat yourself as a staff, you’ll understand the feelings of employee and that will lead you to do right things. It is a true fact that standard salary help to attract employees but today development teams and software engineers are not only focused on salary and benefits.
The below-mentioned factors not only motivate software engineers of Theme Nepal but these are the items that keep motivating software developers and engineers of several IT companies:
- Listen to Voice of your Engineers
Every individual has different characteristics. The thing that motivates one business analyst won’t motivate software engineer. Not only that the motivating factor also varies from one software engineer to the other. For instance, one can be interested in digging into a specific technology while another may go for generalist techniques and ideas. Some engineers may be introverts and are focused on coding rather than discussing the things in the meeting. Thus, managers have to face this difficulty and make an environment to do regular one-to-one conversations. In this period managers should listen to the view of their engineers rather than giving orders and speak.
- Use new technology/Expand Skill Set
Technology is not stable as it changes from time to time. The technology of today might not be fully valuable after few years and thus the technical experts always keep themselves up-to-date with the changes. Software needs to revamp with the modernize software. If the managers agree that it’s time to move with the time, he needs to think about the opportunities of the staffs and their training so that they can perform at their full potential to update skillset. They should also offer the suitable training program to their engineers before jumping into new technology for prior preparation of any work.
- Recognition of their ability/work
Employees are a hard worker and they want their work to be noticed by their supervisor. Software engineers want private recognition rather than public attention because they are somehow introverts in nature. In addition, they might also want peer collaboration and appreciation for an outstanding piece of artistic code. The happiness of a workforce is the culture where people continuously thank each other and share gratitude with their colleagues.
- Promotional opportunities and environment for growth
Many organization has much attention to daily tasks and its output. They don’t offer any room for personal growth and development to their staffs. It is also a fact that many professional employees want to grow their abilities and seek the opportunities to stay technical rather than following management path. Managers also need to provide technical guidance to their engineers for increasing their performance to the next level. Motivation and teamwork are the keys to provide opportunities to the employees so that they could become technical leaders and may regularly produce quality work. Employers should be given an environment to explore their skill set so that they can identify their strength and weaknesses. Expertise employees also like to experience the moment of being compensated for the hard work they have done. Rewards and bonus will also be an added advantage to keep them motivated.
- A pleasant workplace and flexible work hours
Every organization enforces policies for their employees to enter into an office. In case of IT offices, software engineers would be more loyal if they will get flexible working environment. They not only work in offices but become busy at their house solving the problem of the work they are performing at that period. If they reach office late, they are scolded for lateness and it will create negative impressions and might decrease the proportion of labor they put into their work. Avoiding compulsory times and an approach of work-from-anywhere can build a good work culture. Organizations can trust their loyal employees for whom work is more important. Moreover, trustworthy employees like to complete their work in their own time and want to avoid the mandatory times which might be difficult for them.
- Focus on managing the process
The first step to get work done is trying to manage the process of work rather than just managing people. In many companies, there are certain policies and procedures that must be followed but in practical, technical staff should be given the right of coding standards, design decisions, processes, and tools. Designers and developers are focused on examining a situation plus they precisely consider the viable solutions and try to implement the best in practice. However, the best tips for managers is that they should identify the goals and objectives and tools/method to make a practice of giving challenges at the perfect time for solving challenges. Employees seek freedom while they work and over management of people might reduce their performance.
- Give enough Salary
Some Boss might think that paying enough salary and bonus to their staffs’ leads to the happy environment. However, salary always cannot be considered a motivating factor rather it can be a hygienic factor like management and working conditions. Consequently, these factors do not straightly improve motivation. In contrast, hard work pays and you should pay enough salary to your engineers that salary isn’t an issue. The motive of better performance is not always money because engineers look for challenges and creative freedom. Therefore, with the increase in salary one seeks for achieving recognition and growth.
- Respect
Respect is the ideal tool and most crucial motivator for every individual of any field. The gem of software engineers is their technical aptitude and intelligence level. Organizations growth also depends on opinions and insights of their staffs. Engineering group would prefer dealing with complex coding problem rather than building a team for collaboration and discussion of some other issues. Thus, respecting individualism of the talents is a major factor to be considered. In other words, respect is also one culture that company should follow for the happiness of employees to motivate every staff in person.
Conclusion:
Some project managers should realize the fact that it is not a good strategy to force engineers into just writing a number of codes for retaining their talent. Companies need to focus on intrinsic factors which have the largest effect on reality instead of just relying on using extrinsic factors to drive the performances of their engineering team. Thus, organizations should come out of the bureaucratic processes to fasten employees’ performances.
