So, I'm curious, how do you all motivate your staff members to work hard?
This is more directed to the forums who do not provide payment to their staff, though I suppose payment is a motivator 😛 I'm interested in hearing all the different perspectives, since such a wide variety of forums promote themselves here. :yes:
I offer a percent revenue share. Not too useful since there is not revenue at the moment, but since there will eventually be revenue, every post they make contributes towards a future flow of income. 🙂
I try to make it clear to them that there are no poet quotas, under the logic that if I set up a quota, the next time they fail to meet it they would be stuck in a cycle of being too embarrassed to post on the forums. If they fail to post after a while you can always find someone else.
The issue I have had in the past is getting them to be as motivated as I am. I don't have this too much presently. My co-admin loves the forum as much as I do and is extremely helpful, so I got lucky.
Yeah, most definitely. One of my mods love the forum as well, but a lot of personal, outside influences happened preventing her from doing everything she wants on our forum.
I know some staff, obviously, just won't be as motivated, but I still wanna figure out something 😛 However, I cannot offer pay. lol
Prizes and awards are the best if you dont have any money. As you have a RP forum why not use some custom weapons to give to staff and their characters or some small perks 🙂
We don't have that sort of system because we don't have a set roleplaying dealio, thus it'd be rather pointless to do. Even if you were awarded such an item it wouldn't fit for the rest of the roleplays.
Everyone makes a variety of characters that befits the RP they are in. The staff has no control over it; only the creator of the RP does.
For example, a member can make their own RP, plot, and the like. If we awarded staff a sword only for them to join a modern school RP where weapons aren't allowed, then they wouldn't be able to use their sword. Or if they joined a mafia RP where the GM explicitly states that only guns are to be used, then, again they wouldn't be able to use the sword awarded to them.
This would be a good idea if we only had one gigantic RP encompassing the site, but, since we do not, it doesn't really work. We do have Elements, but not all staff members are participating in it. No one is required to join it.
I also know my staff wouldn't really be motivated by that, since I've known all of them for several years now lol. A lot of them are helping because they enjoy helping me, while others have ended up loving the site as they help me. So the people solely doing it to help me have a little less motivation than those who are doing it because they also love the site.
I know some of them will feel more inclined once we get more active, since they've gotten more involved the more members we get.
My coder got more motivated as I gave him events to put together instead of asking him to alter minor coding. So, for him, he needed a challenge, while the original tasks I laid out really weren't challenging for him.
I know knowing my team definitely influences how much I can motivate them. Some are motivated to an extent, but I'd like to get them more excited. I'm hoping that with the events I'm planning with my coder that they may get more motivated.
They aren't a bad team. Some are just less motivated than others.
I have always had post quotas, however I never announce it to the members. Even on here managing the CT, I have a certain number in my head I want to see each person meet a week and if they don't, well, they don't. Because my number is pretty low, not meeting it over multiple weeks usually leads me to believe they honestly don't want the position anymore, unless they are in exams or moving, I tend to let them go. Everyone gets burnt out at one point or another, sometimes they just don't speak up and say they are no longer motivated to do their job and everything that comes with it.
It's a matter of hiring the right people and keeping the members motivated, usually when the members are motivated, the staff are as well because they actually have jobs to do. Then you get those staff members that aren't motivated anyway, despite if they have a job to do, in which case they seriously need to find a new place to be. 😛 I've been lucky and I have hired people that actually care and love being a moderator, most of the time I tend to fire the ones that I didn't hire. :lol: Though my standards are rather high so as soon as they just don't show any effort, it's a fat boot out of the staff room for them.
I usually just send them a message full of encouraging words, and suggest some ideas to get their creative juices flowing. At least then, they have something to work towards, as oppose to being 'burnt-out' which can make issues arise.
