What motives us to do our jobs? Yes, we need to earn money, but that’s only one reason out of many.
The good news about library staff is that a lot of us work in libraries because we love libraries. Our passion and enthusiasm for the place is a huge jump-start for motivating staff and keeping up morale. Not every industry starts with a bottom line like that.
Library staff often say:
- They love helping people
- They love being around all those books and other materials
- They want to be useful
- They love to collaborate
- They love the variety of things they get to do
- They want to be respected and recognized
- They want to keep learning
Anything that you can do to define, encourage and offer opportunities in these areas will help your staff feel motivated.
- Thank you’s should be offered freely and often. It’s important to everyone to feel appreciated.
- Flexible scheduling can be a huge motivator in the library world. If you can grant people reasonable flexibility so they can manage the balance of work, family and outside interests, do it! It costs nothing, and people are always grateful.
- Small perks can also be motivating: offer your staff first crack at bestsellers and/or forgive their fines.
- I like to keep the chocolate tin in our office filled and I like to bring back a little something (like a fun magnet) for everyone when I’m on vacation.
Obviously, your staff is made up individuals, and it’s important to tailor your incentives to various people, while maintaining fairness across the board. Sometimes it might be motivating to narrow someone’s role so that he/she can become an expert in a certain area. Other times it might be motivating to broaden someone’s role so that he/she feels more ownership in another area.
If you want to find out some interesting things about what motivates your staff, try asking them not only why they work, but why they work hard. Then use the answers to help you continue to motivate your staff–it’s totally worth it to have happy staff with high morale!
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Our guest blogger today is Shelley Sutherland, the Youth Services Supervisor at Niles Public Library, who wrote this piece as a member of the Managing Children’s Services Committee.
If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.