Those days have gone when managers motivated the staff by speaking a few inspiring words, called the team meeting in office anytime and all would be there. As a result of the remote work popularity and the flexible hours it is rather rare for most of the employees to be present in the office at the same time. So, managers have to harness the instant communication technology, using mail and social media for explaining benefits and maintain momentum for the staff motivation scheme.

Mobile Motivation

Modern technology moves on and many people have started accessing email and Internet through mobile phones instead of computers. Managers should reconfigure the operations for adapting to “mobile motivation”. In addition to websites, internet and e-mail, Twitter and Facebook provide a lot of opportunities that must be considered.

It is a delusion to a great extent that Twitter and Facebook are just for the young; growing population of the ‘silver surfers’ is the proof of far reaching power of the social media, particularly through mobile platforms. It is worth undertaking certain research of the audience preferences while considering social media platforms. While Facebook is good for one group, it can be LinkedIn which gets votes of other people.

 App To Use

Applications provide the opportunities for exploiting the use of technology in the employee motivation schemes. The app iRecognize allows employers to send the automated text message of praise to employees via Twitter, Facebook, an e-card or a message. As the automized delivery of text message makes it to be less personalized, this application’s use certainly highlights an inevitable part that the mobile motivation starts playing in the employees’ engagement schemes.

Those Who Have Already Started

Birmingham City Council that is considered the largest Europe’s council is an organization to have taken plunge and began messaging employees. Initially this year, 5000 messages were sent by Council to the volunteers at European Athletics Indoor Championships. Sent over 3 days, messages were used as employee recognition and motivation tool. Organizers felt that simplicity and efficiency of sending a message meant that it was an ideal way to be grateful to staff for the support in making that event a success. In America, the company Coca-Cola piloted Coke-Text that is a program for the restaurant managers to send the promotional text messages easily to the workforces and at the same time involve them in the award schemes. Coke-Text created a very positive response within the restaurants and scheme demonstrated that the text messages can improve the methods that are already used and can boost efficiencies.

Including Into The Strategy

Thus, employers keen for integrating motivational text messages through cell phone into the overall recognition strategy and employee engagement must consider some potential problems which can alienate staff. While providing the motivational communication to the whole team, managers can face the situation when the staff gets irrelevant text messages that may have the adverse effect. The overuse of the text messages may have opposite of desired effect.

Post by Linda Waters. Tech blogger, marketing executive for https://www.mspy.com/. Writes on mobile tracking, smartphone apps and mobile innovations.