Understanding Hurdles Faced By Startups To Maintain Employee Interest & Motivation
While working in a start-up can be exciting, it can also be intense. The demanding, fast-paced work environment that start-up companies experience can be complex and challenging for employees. From mental health issues and work-life balance to time management and goal setting, employees deal with several challenges, and entrepreneurs face many difficulties as they attempt to retain employees. Understanding and circumventing these hurdles is vital to maintain employee interest and motivation.
Mental Health: Often swept under the carpet and stigmatised, the challenges related to stress, anxiety, or depression are very real. Mental health issues are much more prevalent than we tend to think and the narrative is slowly changing in this regard. In the fast-paced and volatile world of start-ups, employees may feel pressure to always have their best foot forward and perform well. Addressing this and creating a conscious organisation is very important to ensure that employees remain motivated, happy, and interested in their roles at the company. Creating a culture of care and investing in health resources such as therapy, yoga, and meditation for employees is a great way to offer support in a start-up ecosystem. For example, for Startups we frequently organise meditation, pranayama, and relaxation workshops for our employees.
Work Life Balance: A persistent ‘hustle’ culture can lead to burnout and high employee turnover, which only hurts a business’ bottom line. While some overtime time may be unavoidable, remind your team to prioritise rest. Refrain from sending them emails or messages during their time off. Otherwise, they may feel pressured to keep working and never fully rest. Many companies now offer up to a week of break either during Diwali or Christmas to give employees time off to rejuvenate. Also, remember to keep an open line of communication with your team. This will help you stay ahead of potential issues like burnout.
Reminding your team to pursue their hobbies and fitness goals is another great way to promote a healthy work-life balance. Sports club and similar other initiatives will help employees greatly!
Goal Setting: In the initial phases of start-ups especially, employees may be overwhelmed with their task list. Prioritising tasks and setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) goals is an important step to promote over-all employee well-being and keep employees motivated. To have a goal-setting day at the start of the year where we have a daylong session to just help our team set professional as well as personal goals (including health, family, hobbies, relationships, etc.) Time-management seminars and workshops are also great tools to use to foster a productive and positive culture in start-ups.
To improve employee retention, recruit new talent and keep your team happy in a start-up, be sure to address the above-mentioned issues and foster a welcoming company culture.
