December 2021 – Lokava

An unmotivated team is a force to be reckoned with. As well as an individual’s productivity, the whole team can start to suffer, creating a hostile atmosphere. Plus, it increases issues with punctuality, absences, and a lack of focus, as well as increased stress on your other team members who try to pick up the slack. Over time, this can lead to a real divide in your team, and employees will start to feel under-appreciated and overworked.

Want to know how to ensure your team stays unmotivated in the new year? Then we’re here with our 10 top tips to encourage a lack of motivation and team spirit in 2022!

How to reduce employee motivation

1. Don’t get to know your team

Totally avoid building any relationships with your team, both as individuals and as a team. Having a close and supportive relationship with your employees will keep them feeling valued and motivated, so avoid this.

2. Lack of clarity and transparency

You know that saying, employees don’t leave jobs, they leave managers? This tends to be down to a lack of transparency, respect, and support between employees. A manager impacts a considerable part of an employee’s role, so to ensure that your team is unmotivated, avoid being clear or transparent with your team. Ignore your teams’ suggestions or say that you’ll do something and then don’t. That’ll keep them unmotivated.

3. Don’t encourage your team to do better or to have goals

Goals should be linked to time, measurability and realistic. But to encourage a lack of productivity and poor motivation, you should not demonstrate how your teams’ roles contribute to the bigger picture.

4. Don’t offer any feedback

And when they do complete any goals, don’t check in with them or offer any constructive feedback. Plus, make the process of goal setting, performance reviews and feedback complicated, formal, and unclear. Don’t make it clear or easy for your team to boost their skills and get promoted.

5. Ignore good work

That team member who frequently goes the extra mile, performs above expectations, and reflects your company values? Yeah, totally ignore their excellent work and wait for their goodwill to burn out. Oh! Also, never say thank you for their work. Let them know that it’s their job and that’s what you expect from them. That’ll keep them unmotivated and unproductive.

6. Don’t acknowledge any challenges or difficulties

Project dragging on, short-staffed or resources tight? Don’t say anything; just leave your team to muddle through. It’s easy for employees to get demoralised when they feel stuck or don’t have the right tools for the job, so let this happen and you’ll have an unhappy team in no time!

7. Encourage sterile workspaces

Workplaces with small touches like nice furniture, plants or artwork that brighten up the place or even a fully stocked kitchen are small tokens of appreciation that keep your employees wanting to show up every day to do their best work. So, scrap all of that. No team tea and coffee, no plants, no personal items allowed on desks. Keep the workspace sterile to encourage your team to dread coming to work.

8. No promotions, no progression

Most employees will want the opportunity to progress in their roles, but if there’s a lack of progression available, they’ll be likely to lose motivation and interest in their current position and look for a new job.

9. A strict working arrangement

If you’re in the office 8-6, then your team should be too, right? They’ll have to find other options for their care or out-of-work responsibilities. Don’t offer any flexibility, and you’ll lose your teams’ motivation.

10. Underpay, over-demand

Fair compensation, benefits and expectations keep employees engaged and happy to work. Instead, have your team members doing the work of two or three people and don’t pay them the salary to reflect it. You’ll lose their motivation in no time!

So, there you have it, our top 10 tips to lose your teams’ motivation, interest, and productivity!

Obviously, we’re joking, and we do not recommend that you treat your team in this way at all. Your team is one of the most critical aspects of your company, and you rely on them to do the best for your customers. So, ensuring they’re motivated, happy and productive at work is vital for your company.

The famous Simon Sinek quote is relevant here: happy employees ensure happy customers.

What causes your employees to lose motivation?

A lack of motivation isn’t always solely to do with staff’s working environment, however, it’s often caused by issues at work such as:

A lack of confidence in management
Boredom at work
An unmanageable workload
Hostile working environment
Lack of career progression or promotion
Feeling overworked and under-appreciated
Issues outside of work such as financial concerns, bereavement or illness in the family

How to recognise a lack of motivation in your team

By having a solid relationship with your team, both as individuals and as a whole, you’ll be able to notice some of the tell-tale signs of demotivation, such as:

Frequently being late to work, or taking ages to get going once they get to work
Change in mood, or being distant from their colleagues
Calling in sick more often
Lack of focus, or struggling to get through work as quickly
Inappropriate or negative comments
Lack of input into team meetings
They just seem constantly tired or checked out

So, how to motivate your staff instead?

Do the exact opposite to our ten tips above. Encourage a strong relationship with your team, get to know them all personally, as well as the way they work together. Ensure they feel heard, respected, and like their contribution matters – because it does, your business can’t run without your team.

At Lokava, we work closely with businesses to improve efficiency by solving issues through innovative software solutions. If you’d like to know more about how we can help your organisation, why not book your free consultation call today?

The coronavirus pandemic has truly changed the way that we work. Unfortunately, this has also been the case for cybercriminals who’ve had a busy and lucrative time during the pandemic. A new study conducted by cybercrime experts from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) and Flinders University has revealed that cybercrime has significantly increased during the pandemic.

The study involved 12,000 Australians and discovered that one-third of the adult population had been victims of pure cybercrime in their lifetime. Additionally, a further 14% reported disruption to their network systems within the last year, indicating an increase in frequency during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Occurring across the world, it appears many hackers and cybercriminals have taken advantage of a global pandemic and sought to capitalise on the shift to remote working.

What does cybercrime look like?

Whilst cybercrime was an issue pre-pandemic, many of the threats have intensified due to opportunities that have arisen due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Cybercriminals have been able to ransom millions of dollars from businesses and individuals during the pandemic, using tried and tested scams such as:

online scams and phishing
disruptive malware (such as ransomware)
data harvesting malware
malicious domains
fake news

A pandemic of online crime

According to the study by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) and Flinders University, only a tiny fraction of the financial losses are recovered by the victims of cybercrimes. Additionally, the study indicated that roughly 2.8 million Australians had fallen victim to cybercrime during the pandemic.

The experts believe that Covid-19-related economic disruptions have created the ideal conditions for opportunistic cybercriminals to take advantage. According to the study, Cybercrime has cost Australia’s public, government and businesses an estimated $3bn.

What is pure cybercrime?

Pure cybercrime is the term for criminal activities against computer networks such as hacking, releasing viruses and malware, and distributed denial-of-service attacks. Utilising technology, cyber-enabled crimes make traditional crimes such as stalking, identity theft and fraud far easier to commit with fewer chances of being caught.

Russel Smith, a professor at Flinders University, said:

“Pure cybercrime is a highly profitable criminal activity and results in substantial financial losses to Australians. On current information, as cybercriminals become more sophisticated, it’s clear the need for additional expenditure on prevention will need to increase.”

What’s caused the increase in cybercrime? Working remotely and its risks

During the pandemic, the huge shift to remote employment has created a new target for cybercriminals due to many employees working from home and using their personal smartphones and computers. Working from home already doesn’t guarantee the same level of cybersecurity as an office environment.

In addition, many small and medium-sized businesses have a ‘Bring Your Own’ approach to devices, meaning employees can use their own devices to access corporate information. Combine this with personal devices – which aren’t as secure as corporate networks – and users will find themselves more exposed to cyberattacks.

Furthermore, the rise in remote work also saw more companies embracing cloud services, which then found themselves falling victim to cybercriminals.

Those working in financial services, healthcare, public administration, and retail have been the most attractive targets to criminals. Financial service and insurance executives experienced the most significant rise in ransomware and phishing attempts in the past year. Health care organisations have also frequently been targeted by ‘misdelivery’ attacks, which fool victims into sending their data to fraudsters.

Phishing attacks

Attacks such as phishing and ransomware that threaten to publish private data unless a ransom is paid have become increasingly popular. This is due to ransomware and hacking tools becoming commercialised and simplified over the last 18 months.

This has meant that cybercriminals have no longer needed programming or coding skills to successfully commit a ransomware attack.

Are businesses adequately prepared for cybersecurity risks?

The pandemic and the need for remote working has created many challenges, especially for SME companies. They haven’t been prepared for the massive rise in sophisticated cyberattacks, and there needs to be a lot of progress made to raise awareness of the need for increased cybersecurity.

In their haste to get staff set up and working remotely, some companies haven’t always made cybersecurity the priority that it needs to be. This may result in some companies not doing stringent checks into personal devices to ensure they’re equipped with security protections – before their employees access company data. Or they’re relying on VPNs to do a job that they’re not designed for.

Companies can utilise security measures without being intrusive to their employee’s devices or privacy. For example, host checking validates specific requirements on personal devices before allowing access to corporate applications.

Ways to protect yourself: How companies and employees can increase cybersecurity

There isn’t a simple solution to cybercrime, but we recommend a few simple steps to help reduce the risk of a data breach:

Use antivirus protection
Cybersecurity awareness within the organisation
Phishing awareness and prevention training for staff
Home network security
Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Identify weak spots within your organisation’s network
Undertake frequent reviews that evaluate your cybersecurity risk exposure
Utilising hardware issued by the company instead of a Bring Your Own approach

What have we learnt from the pandemic and the rise in cybercrime?

We’ve all learnt a lot from the pandemic about ourselves and the way we work. The best way to successfully limit the risks of cyberattacks is to be adequately prepared. Companies and organisations with the ability to quickly react have found themselves able to reduce the impact of a cyberattack.

Where possible, corporate-owned devices should be the standard for companies allowing remote access to confidential and sensitive data. However, where corporate data can be accessed from a personal device, cybersecurity should be assessed to minimise the risks.

The sad reality is that companies need to be prepared for the ‘when’, not ‘if’ they get attacked and recognise the impact of a data breach or ransomware can be devastating. With this in mind, there are ways to reduce the likelihood of a cyberattack and the damage caused. But this will require a cyber strategy and planning, with investigation into remote working practices to ensure compliance with optimal security measures.

Month: December 2021

10 ways to ensure your team stays unmotivated in the new year