Find out different ways to motivate your commercial teams after holidays and fight the “post-holiday blues”
September is a month of new exciting beginnings and it makes us to come back to our routines with renewed energies. Our minds and bodies are still on holidays, but it is time to return to our fast pace of life. Break time always leads to positive thoughts and good resolutions, so coming back to work is the right time to put them into practice. The implications of returning back to work and facing intellectual and professional challenges can sometimes become a burden instead of a motivational incentive.
According to a research carried out by the HR provider Adecco, one in three employees suffers from post-holiday blues. Why? It is because of their low resilience when returning back to work, schedules, and responsibilities. While dealing with this temporary adaptation disorder, employees suffer from:
- stress
- nervousness
- irritability
- lack of concentration
- difficulties in managing projects
- inability in taking decisions
- impossibility of meeting deadlines
- continuous arguments with clients and co-workers
This situation not only affects emotionally the work environment, but it also affects professional results, so this disorder becomes a company issue.
Is there any way that companies can help their employees to face the “post-holiday blues” and mitigate its impact? Yes, indeed. It has been already proved that work environment is a key factor to make return to work much easier. In order to benefit this transition, companies have to come up with specific motivation plans to successfully overcome this challenge.
If you want to know more about employee motivation or effective team motivation dynamics, do not hesitate to read “How to develop a successful employee motivation strategy”.
How to develop an employee motivation strategy in order to avoid post-holiday blues.
This plan has to be based on two main principles:
1- Rational planning of tasks.
Managers have to plan their employees’ tasks wisely in advance, so they will be able to face challenges progressively. This way, productivity will gradually return to normal, and teams will not feel overwhelmed by the physical and mental changes resulting from an extended break. Flexible working hours can also be very helpful.
2- Teams’ emotional support and motivation.
Employee motivation strategies will succeed if companies are empathetic and understanding with their workforce, and if employee well-being and team motivation are really important to them. For example, organizing a welcoming event like a team dinner or a team building activity is very useful to motivate teams and have a positive impact on post-holiday stress. It is also important to meet each one of the employees individually to ask, listen and help them with their professional concerns. Moreover, presenting new goals in a clear and exciting way is also helpful to overcome “post-holiday blues”, and this can be done with gamification dynamics.
If you want to know more about motivating your commercial teams, please check “Three key aspects to motivate commercial teams”.
Gamification: a successful tool to motivate teams
It is essential that companies play an active role in the mitigation of the “post-holiday blues”, but it is also vital that they take actions to prevent it. We are not talking about adopting stop-gap solutions in September and neglecting teams’ motivation during the rest of the year. It is about increasing employees’ resilience and providing useful tools in order keep their motivation high. In this way, it is widely recognized that gamification can increase team engagement up to 30%.
Employees’ achievements become something tangible thanks to the rankings, points, and awards offered by gamification dynamics. Besides, their self-confidence is improved because their results are publicly acknowledged. Objective and direct feedback, one of the main features of any gamification dynamics, makes teams feel valued and appreciated, and it allows them to know their progress and how far they are from achieving their goals. At the same time, gamification adds playful features to the work environment, which becomes more enjoyable. Moreover, it increases interactions and informal conversations between co-workers and managers. This communicative environment does not only keep teams’ motivation high, but it also becomes an excellent tool to avoid personal arguments, frustration, and even work absenteeism.
Gamification dynamics have a positive impact on results. Thanks to our gamifications, sales teams improved their motivation, so consequently our clients’ sales have considerably increased between 5% and 15%, in some cases up to 20%. Besides, 80% of Playmotiv’s participants stated that they have enjoyed the experience and the level of satisfaction was 9 out of 10 points. These results confirm that gamification is an effective tool to improve teams’ motivation.
If you want to know more about our gamification solutions, please check our case studies.
