What do you do if you're struggling to keep employees engaged in a Product Design career?

Retaining employees in a Product Design career involves understanding their motivations, providing opportunities for growth, fostering a collaborative environment, and ensuring their work aligns with their interests and skills. Few points that could be adopted are as follows: 1) Assign projects that are challenging and align with their interests. 2) Offer opportunities for skill development and advancement. 3)Regularly provide feedback on their work and recognize their achievements. 4)Encourage collaborative work environment where team members can share ideas and work together. 5.Encourage a healthy work-life balance. 6.Provide opportunities to work on cutting-edge technologies. 7.Get Regular employee feedback and implement good points.

1. Establish Clear Goals: Ensure employees understand the purpose and objectives of their work within the product design team. 2. Collaboration: Encourage collaboration and open communication among team members to promote engagement. 3. Provide Growth Opportunities: Offer opportunities for skill development and advancement within the product design field. 4. Recognize Achievements: Recognize and celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of team members. 5. Support Work-Life Balance: Encourage a healthy work-life balance to prevent burnout and maintain engagement.

Take time to listen to your employees' concerns and aspirations. Learn about their career goals and what motivates them to excel in product design.

There are approaches, but what I find useful in most scenarios are as follows: Cultivate Positive Culture: Foster an inclusive environment valuing creativity, innovation, and collaboration. Facilitate Growth Opportunities: Offer training, mentorship, and conference attendance for professional development. Encourage Open Communication: Create a supportive space for employees to voice ideas and concerns. Recognize and Reward: Acknowledge individual and team achievements to boost morale and reinforce value. Promote Work-Life Balance: Offer flexible schedules, remote options, and wellness programs to prevent burnout. Prioritize Engagement: Invest in employee well-being to cultivate a motivated, high-performing team.

Share enthusiasm for product creation and encourage to pursue new challenges. Expected royalties are also good motivator and option of long term dedication

Provide opportunities for skill development and career advancement. Offer training programs, mentorship, and chances to work on challenging projects that help employees grow professionally.

Product design thrives on fresh ideas and bold thinking. Foster a culture that celebrates experimentation and embraces the occasional "happy accident." Here's how: Organize regular brainstorming sessions where all ideas are welcome, regardless of how unconventional they may seem. This free-flowing exchange can spark unexpected solutions and ignite creative problem-solving. While calculated risks are essential for innovation, fear of failure can stifle creativity. Make it clear that experimentation is encouraged and that learning from missteps is valued just as much as success.

Create an environment where creativity thrives. Encourage brainstorming sessions, allow for experimentation, and support out-of-the-box thinking to keep employees engaged and inspired.

Recognizing good work is simple yet powerful. In the professional world, we are primed to believe that doing good work is a reward in itself. I don't believe that to be true; well I do believe that we need to have goals or directions we want to go towards but helping each other out, genuinely praising someone's work when you feel its good, and helping with constructive criticism in private, is one of best way to help grow an individual. This also helps form a stronger bond and fosters team spirit.

Acknowledge and appreciate the hard work and achievements of your team members. Regularly recognize their contributions publicly or through rewards and incentives.

Promote teamwork and collaboration among team members. Encourage sharing ideas, constructive feedback, and working together towards common goals.

There is magic in collaboration, I would try as much as possible to keep them together especially if they are around technically inclined. This will foster an interest in the team members..

Feeling valued and having a clear path for advancement are powerful motivators. Publicly acknowledge and celebrate your team's hard work and successes. This could involve highlighting individual contributions during meetings, showcasing exceptional design work within the company, or offering rewards for reaching milestones. Provide opportunities for professional growth through workshops, conferences, or online courses. By supporting their skill development, you demonstrate your commitment to their long-term success within the company.

Everyone experiences crests and troughs in their career. People go through different phases of life and as they do, they develop different interests. When interests tend to waver due to work or personal issues, I've found that talking openly helps. If the team has the luxury where someone could step up, talking about reducing workload is an option. But my favorite one has been to pair up with a collaborative peer so that it helps rekindle what's been dormant.

Ensure that workloads are manageable and fair. Avoid overloading employees with tasks and provide support when needed to prevent burnout and maintain motivation.

In a world where Tech word is synonymous to IT, gen AI, IOT...., it is possible that even great minds involved in complex product development may feel low of themselves as the relative pay packages are much lower. The work place may not look posh as the companies operate on much lower profit margins. At times the product devopment takes many years, thus less opportunities for instant gratification. In my view, it is crucial for people and organisations involved in such business to understand the importance of the work they do and the positive impact their work and products make on society. For example, developing a medical device can be more valuable than coding for social media app & earning 6 figures. Being proud of the work is the ??.

Regularly review and update your engagement strategies based on feedback from employees. Stay flexible and open to new ideas that can further enhance employee engagement in the product design career.

My first instinct would be to understand the challenge. What type of challenge would it be from a social, mental, emotional and physical stance? Is the lack of motivation part of a ''No, because'' scheme? Is the lack of engagement...? Acknowledging and recognizing the problem will help to address what resources/support can be effective. Then as many article on this topic, you can work the support system in the project values to foster engagement as naturally as possible. Dissociating the unmotivating feeling and replacing with the new drive without your team noticing will give them a sense of accomplishment to overcome that challenge and will become a source of motivation in the future as individuals and community too.