When times are tough, how can you motivate your employees to do more with less?

When times are tough and your workforce is leaner, your sales are slower and your budget is tighter, how can you motivate your employees to do more even though they have so much less to work with? Here are 9 tips:

1. Praise, reward, and recognize. People really don't mind working hard; they just want to know that their efforts are appreciated. Recognition doesn't have to be through raises and bonuses. Instead, regularly send good performers handwritten notes or personal e-mails of thanks and congratulations.

2. Communicate constantly. In tough times, many managers tend to withdraw because they aren't getting clear direction from their own bosses. Remember that fear grows in a vacuum, and employees will fill that vacuum of information with their own worries about their future.

3. Be open and honest with employees. Even if leaders don't have all the answers, they need to share the latest news and developments with their people (both good and bad). If the situation is unclear, acknowledge that, too. Keep the information flowing in order to lower the anxiety and stress that stem from uncertainty.

4. Adopt a variety of ways to find out what is on employee's minds. It will require using several different approaches to dig deep and discover how employees are feeling. These methods include walking around among employees and asking questions, individual face-to-face meetings, informal brown-bag lunches and town hall meetings.

5. Give employees an opportunity to vent about such issues as layoffs, increased workloads, salary freezes and other cutbacks. "Once they know you are listening to them and paying attention to their concerns, they are far more likely to put forth an extra effort in spite of the challenges.

6. Don't be afraid to push your employees to take more initiative and become more involved. Encouraging employees to be more resourceful, rather than waiting for direction, can inspire creativity, energy and motivation. Employees will be proud to know that their individual efforts are part of the solution.

7. Get clear about your own priorities. Managers often hear that they need to communicate their priorities, but they can't communicate these if they haven't decided what they are. Leaders need to make the tough decisions about what really needs to be done now, and what isn't as urgent and can wait longer.

8. Reassess day to day, even hour to hour. What seemed important yesterday may not be so important today. Altough your priorities must be based on a sound business strategy, you need to continually reassess them, and help your team make good decisions about where to spend their time and resources.

9. Get in closer touch with customers, prospects and vendors. You and your team need up-to-the-minute information from those outside your organization, including customers, prospective customers and vendors in order to make decisions. You will have far more success getting people to work together, and foster collaboration, if your information is current and solid.

Source: Susan Bates, author of Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act! (McGraw-Hill 2009).