How to Increase Employee Productivity

One of the biggest obstacles that all employers have to face is the lack of productivity from their employees.

Here are some tips to enhance your workplace and get the ball rolling again.

Set Standards and Goals

Employees are more motivated when they have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. As their employer, make sure you sit down with each of your employees to establish clear goals.

Make sure they are S.M.A.R.T goals:

  • Specific – Don’t waste your time making vague goals. Be as specific as possible.
  • Measurable – Make sure you’ll be able to measure progress and outcome of the goal.
  • Attainable – Don’t make the goal too difficult to reach or unreasonable.
  • Realistic – Ask the question: “Is this goal worth the work to attain it?”
  • Timed – Establish deadlines for the goal to help you focus and help you track the progress.

Communicate Effectively and Efficiently

Just like it’s important to set a clear understanding of expectations, it’s important to communicate effectively and efficiently. Communication is crucial in any company. Without proper verbal or written communication, any business will lose functionality. Proper communication also includes the understanding of the hierarchy and expertise within the company, so they know who to reach out to regarding their concerns.

Know your employees

Simply knowing your employees work history and their name isn’t enough. If you treat your employees like a part to the machinery that runs your company, they will burn out easily, feel underappreciated, and lose motivation. Knowing what motivates your employees is important to figure out how to motivate them. You also will gain knowledge from getting to know your employees about what happens outside of work. Showing respect and understanding to the personal lives of your employees will create appreciative and productive personnel.

Work in some training

When you start a new job or new task, there’s nothing worse than not knowing what to do. Include opportunities for training and obtaining new skills to enhance their overall performance. Training provides confidence and leads to employees being more productive.

Incentivize and Gamification

It doesn’t matter if the incentive is a $10 gift card or a paid day off. The incentive gives employees something to work towards as a personal goal. It also fosters great competition among colleagues.

Gamification is the concept of applying game design techniques to help engage and motivate employees to do mundane or tedious tasks. Whether it’s adding a point system or creating fun rules with a prize in mind, you can make most any task fun and exciting.

Provide the right equipment

If employees lack the proper equipment necessary to do tasks, then they have an excuse to not accomplish those tasks. Make sure that the everyday equipment works. You should also keep tabs with them about additional equipment they may need, especially if this is a new position or if they are doing new tasks.

Be the role model

Employees always reflect the work ethic of their immediate supervisors. When people see their superiors work hard or slack off, they will end up doing the same.

Avoid favoritism

Most importantly, nothing hurts an employee’s performance more than the effects of favoritism. As humans, it’s normal to feel favoritism toward specific individuals, however as employers, choosing favorites will lead to a split workforce. Competition for your employer’s affections is never a good type of competition within a work environment. All employees should be treated fairly to maintain productivity from all employees.

 

To measure your employee’s productivity, check out these tips from our friends at Advance Solutions.

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