As experts in employee engagement, we work with leaders to improve performance and maximise employee potential every day.

One of the most important areas to focus on is employee behaviour – making the most of your teams’ daily actions is paramount if you want to hit key business targets. But what are the types of employee behaviour that managers can influence?

After analysing employee behaviour across many different industries, including global tech companies and distributed hospitality teams, we’ve created an effective solution that improves performance and reduces attrition in most cases. We call it employee recognition software, but it also encompasses improvements in engagement through rewards and peer encouragement.

In this article, we’ll explain the nuances of mastering employee behaviour to achieve your goals. We’ll touch on the importance of positive role models and creating feedback loops while giving you tips that work even without our award-winning platform. Sound like a deal? Let’s jump in. 

What is Employee Behaviour?

If you need us to answer this question, you might be the wrong audience for an article about activating managers. So we’ll assume you understand the basic concept: employee behaviour is the repeated actions employees take at work. Moving on.

When we talk about “employee behaviour”, we are talking about the ways your people contribute towards your company values. For example, if your value is “teamwork”, positive employee behaviour could be offering or seeking feedback from peers without prompting by managers. Environments that support actions like peer-to-peer feedback will create a high-performance culture – and help you hit your business goals.

Can Managers Negatively Influence Employee Behaviour?

Yes. According to Gallup, 70% of the variance in employee engagement is down to the manager, rather than HR policies.

Managers tend to be biased against remote work situations, despite employees overwhelmingly favouring them. Activating management potential to improve engagement is the first step towards encouraging positive employee behaviour.

Distributed teams present several challenges for improving employee behaviour,  including inconsistent bonding activities, lack of feedback, and difficulties with employees expressing their most authentic selves.

Here’s a hard truth: regardless of industry or pay, enthusiasm for work is declining. Employees want more out of their lives, prioritising family time and extracurricular hobbies over promotions. That’s why it’s beneficial to your business goals to make employees feel valued by activating manager potential. If management can keep their teams engaged, you can reduce turnover and increase productivity, all while giving employees a better quality of life.

Mo doesn’t just shift the dial on the people metrics that matter. We pave the way for forward-thinking leaders to rewrite the pact between employer and employee.

What Are the Types of Employee Behaviour That Managers Can Influence?

Most employees are naturally drawn to routine, especially when codified in a social setting – but these rituals must feel meaningful. By locking in positive habits, you can create a loop that promotes constant, steady change that improves positive behaviour across your teams. Let’s break it down.

1. Productivity

A good manager can have a significant impact on their team’s productivity. Most people dislike being micromanaged – but fail to achieve if left to manage their own workload. Finding a balance between over and under-managing is a challenge for every leader. 

Gallup proposes a “silver bullet” for fixing bad management practices that prioritise “coaching” over traditional “managing”. Based on their data, they noticed that the best managers opt for a coaching-first approach that emphasises weekly coaching sessions above micromanagement. 

While this approach can move the needle on an individual level, how can organisations create systematic change to their productivity levels?

To improve productivity, you must incentivise your employees to achieve their best work. There is a simple way to achieve this: by creating a reward and recognition culture. 

2. Engagement

Engagement rates are declining across most sectors. This is bad news for companies that already have squeezed profit margins and even worse news for employees who will go through redundancies as a result of falling revenue.

It’s in everyone’s interest to work hard towards a common goal. But new work structures, like remote and hybrid models, have changed the way people spread work across the day. Is remote work bad for engagement? The data is varied, but it’s clear that distributed teams struggle with connection and engagement in most sectors.

Regardless of whether you measure data through a regular engagement survey, it will benefit you to improve engagement rates across your company. Managers can achieve this through several methods that we have detailed below – including peer-to-peer recognition.

3. Teamwork

One of the most prized positive behaviours is “teamwork”, but what does it actually entail? Teamwork means more than more than one person working on a project – instead, successful teamwork involves everyone playing their roles in tandem to achieve a common goal.

Managers can encourage teamwork by clearly delegating roles among their people. Encouraging employees to “own” their areas will allow them to establish boundaries that enable conflict-free teamwork.

How Can Managers Positively Influence Employee Behaviour?

Now that we’ve established what are the types of employee behaviour that managers can influence, it’s time to examine the action points for creating real change in your organisation. We’ll cover three important areas – our platform can support a variety of strategies to improve employee behaviour.

Peer-to-peer Recognition

Have you considered harnessing the power of recognition through regular kudos? This can be manager-to-employee or peer-to-peer recognition, but ideally, you want to 

If you’re already encouraging kudos, here’s an easy win: have you considered codifying your company values into your Recognition strategy?

Recognising your teams is the perfect time to remind them of Normative’s core values. By rewarding behaviour that aligns with these values, you immediately create a greater sense of purpose across the organisation.

To make this strategy even more effective, consider introducing peer-to-peer Recognition. Giving employees incentivisation to recognise their colleagues increases These techniques should be easy to implement in your current Recognition platform. However, if you’d like help to centralise Recognition and Reward across your employees, we specialise in platforms that reduce the admin burden for HR.

Now that we’ve discussed how easy it is to make the most of your Recognition strategy, let’s explore the challenges of encouraging positive behaviour across distributed teams.

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Accountability

Do your people currently have the opportunity to connect based on personal factors? Is there a place where in-office, remote and hybrid employees can get to know each other – and feel closer to a common goal?

By incorporating your company’s positive values into the way employees communicate, Mo’s platform boosts engagement and encourages positive behaviour.

To improve accountability, you need to create a culture of “belonging” in your organisation. You can achieve this through two methods: getting your employees to feel more connected to each other and encouraging them to buy into the mission of your organisation.

Mo’s engagement platform provides a place where employees can share written recognition and monetary rewards. The platform is customisable, making it easy for you to reflect your strategy and achieve your goals.

To unify a reward and recognition culture with employee “buy-in”, you need to think of ways to codify your values into their daily actions.

By incorporating your company’s positive values into your recognition strategy, such as “Make It Happen”, “Achieve Together”, and “Have Fun Along the Way”, into the fabric of how employees celebrate their wins, Mo’s platform boosts engagement and encourages productivity. 

Feedback

A recent report from the National Bureau of Economic Research found employees who worked in a different building from the rest of their teammates received 22% less feedback than those who shared a workspace. It also found that junior employees received and asked for less feedback when they worked remotely.

When your teams work across a distributed model, it pays to take feedback onto a trackable platform. It ensures fairness and allows your people to express their feelings. No matter where your employees are, they have a space to share and reflect. In short, centralised feedback promotes company values and increases positive employee behaviour.

Mo’s platform centralises all of your employee wins and celebrations. By encouraging your teams to share the Moments That Matter, you make feedback a codified behaviour in your organisation.

How Can Mo Help Managers Influence Employee Behaviour?

Now that we’ve established what types of employee behaviour managers can influence, it’s time to think about the next step. Mo’s platform encourages feedback without increasing your company’s admin load.

Boosts”, or automated prompts, are the heart of Mo’s engagement platform. They encourage users to post “Moments” on the feed on topics ranging from Pet Pics to Experiment Learnings – the ideas are endless.

Boosts are fully customisable based on your goals. We can even take your engagement survey insights and feed them into your Mo platform; the software will tell your managers exactly what Boosts to activate to encourage the behaviours you desire.

To encourage positive employee behaviour, use a weekly Boost that asks teams to share something personal. For example: “Share your favourite Moment from the weekend”. No matter whether they are remote or in-office, employees will be encouraged to bond over their shared experiences.

We turn your disconnected employees into engaged teams.

Learn more about our proven strategies

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement drives high performance.

Employee recognition solutions

Employee Recognition

Employee Recognition improves team connection.

Staff Rewards

Staff rewards and recognition drive performance.

Mo is the Answer to Influencing Employee Behaviour

Mo is a culture and engagement platform that uses data insights to drive real improvement in engagement scores while reducing staff turnover. We strategically help people teams create great places to work through continuous, positive action.

If you’re looking for ways to take action on measuring employee engagement, learn more about how to shift the dial at the manager level and transform insights into action. To find out if you’re eligible for our money-back guarantee, book a demo with our team.

Written by Alice Florence Orr

All Articles by Alice Florence Orr