Year-end motivation check! 3 strategies to psych up your team

Blink and December will be here, which makes it a good time to focus on some year-end motivation for your finance team.

Fall brings a return to predictable work schedules. But the transition from summer to fall is notoriously slower for some.

Start noticing a dip in enthusiasm or a drop in productivity in any of your people during crunch time? Best not to ignore it.

Getting — and keeping — folks motivated at crunch time

Consider these strategies if members of your finance team could use some extra year-end motivation:

1. Maximize individual strengths. You have a good idea what each member of your team brings to the table. Perhaps you even discovered some new strengths during work-from-home or hybrid work. As you think about what it takes to achieve a successful year-end, be sure you match up individual team members with what they do best. And think outside the box: Have someone with a great sense of humor? Maybe have them design a few funny memes with gentle (or not-so-gentle) reminders of when purchasers need to get all final documentation in.
2. Set small, achievable goals. Along with main project goals (get all W-2s to employees) create attainable checkpoint goals. They should be things your team can reasonably accomplish by the end of the day and the end of the week. Mini-wins can be a huge boost for your team.
3. Avoid scheduling unnecessary meetings. Some meetings need to happen. And some folks will tell you any meeting is “unnecessary.” But at this time of year when time is so tight would a daily status update email be just as effective for sharing the valuable things that you’d be discussing in that upcoming meeting?