If you can't just pay your staff to work harder, what can you do? The answer is to give them ownership, autonomy, and understanding. In other words, you:

• Let them take credit for what they do and put their name on it

• You give them the freedom to do things their own way

• And you give them the understanding, so they know why they’re doing it

This first part is important because it gives your staff a certain amount of pride in what they're doing. If your team feel as though they are working on their own projects and as though they will get rewarded for the work they do, then they have a very good reason to work harder. Again, in this case, the work becomes its own reward .

Give someone a ‘project’ and let them put their stamp on it and they can use this to prove their skills, something to add to their CVs, and a challenge. Let someone create their own sections on your website with their name on it and it becomes something they will be proud of and that they can show their friends and family – they will work harder on it!

And finally, you need to make sure your team understands the 'why'. This is important because it allows you to stop micromanaging and to give your team agency over the way they do their products. That and we've already seen how motivating a simple 'why' can be.

So instead of telling someone to ‘move those boxes from A to B using the forklift and in no less than 2 hours’, tell them ‘the pickup truck is coming tomorrow to collect the inventory, make sure it’s ready’. This not only gives them the ability to work their way, to be smart about it and potentially get time off and to get the sense of reward that comes from solving problems; it also allows them to make critical decisions without referring to you for help every time there’s a stumbling block.

Imagine giving those first sets of instructions and then the forklift breaks down. In this scenario, your team may now not know what to do! They were told to use the forklift so all they can do is to come and ask you what plan B is.

But with the second set of instructions, they were never explicitly told to use the forklift so they might instead decide to get the team to chip in and lift the palettes. Or they might find a way to get the pickup truck further into the warehouse. It’s up to them – and this is when people do their best work, and you can stay less involved.

But remember, you still need to take responsibility for their decisions. This is the mark of a good leader, and it is what will give your team the confidence to make those kinds of choices.