Employees productivity matters in order to maximize the output within the least amount of effort. This blog will serve you the answer to the following questions:
What is employee productivity?
Why is employee productivity important?
What are the strategies to boost the employees productivity?
What are the benefits of employee productivity?
Every organization expects high productivity from its employees. But, dealing with employees and understanding them is not an easy job.
It requires great strategies to overcome this problem.
So, are you an employer losing golden opportunities because of poor employee productivity?
Do your employees not deliver the work as per your requirements and you’re worried?
If so, this blog is the right guide for you.
What is Employee Productivity?
In simple words, employees productivity is the output per worker per hour.
Employers identify the need of deploying more or fewer workers on any project based on this metric.
For easy understanding, productivity is measured through generated revenue. If productivity goes up, revenue follows and vice versa, resulting in profit or loss.
Not all employees are productive.
Their productivity depends on their interest, motivation, and work satisfaction.
How to Improve Employee Productivity: Our Top 10 Tips
Once you’ve identified why your workforce productivity levels may be low, the next step is to think about a solution to the problem. It’s reported that 61% of employees feel a sense of burn-out at their current job. In fact, burn-out is a huge factor that affects employee productivity levels and it’s certainly something that can be tackled head-on. We’ve put together 10 top tips on how to boost productivity levels in the workplace, with a mix of short and long term approaches.
1. Improve Employee Onboarding
Many employers still have the mindset that once a contract is signed, they’re guaranteed the loyalty of their new employees. This traditional working mentality no longer applies to talent of the new generation. It requires an effective onboarding program to successfully integrate them into the company culture.
Employers lose 17% of their new hires within the first 90 days due to an ineffective onboarding strategy. Whereas, a good onboarding program increases retention by 50%. The basic elements of effective onboarding consist of extensive training, feedback, check-ins and hands-on support. As well as this, it’s important for a company intranet to make it quick and easy for employees to learn as much about their colleagues as possible.
2. Stop Micromanaging
Many leaders think that micromanaging and delegating tasks to employees is the key to enhancing productivity but in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Employee empowerment is where a business places trust in its employees to control their own tasks and day to day activities in the workplace.
Although many businesses may be terrified at the thought of leaving their employees to manage their own tasks, empowered employees are more likely to be productive and 23% are more likely to offer ideas and solutions to their team.
3. Encourage Time Off and Agile Working
As flexible working patterns arise, more companies should be open to the opportunity of agile working. This gives your employees the flexibility in when, where and how you work, to suit their needs and have a more structured work/life balance to increase employee wellbeing. An agile workplace empowers your team to take ownership of projects, manage their own time, and work according to their strengths.
4. Hire People, Not CV’s
It can be easy to get caught up in an outdated and traditional hiring process where good education, relevant job experience and the right skills sets is all you look for. However, there is another criteria that’s equally as important, if not more. Culture fit.
Hiring for a culture fit is about bringing employees into the company whose beliefs, behavior, and values align with your organisation. Communicating your company’s culture from the start helps a candidate understand what they can expect as an employee, so they can make an informed decision on whether to accept the job offer. If this isn’t discussed and culture fit isn’t a part of your hiring strategy, employees are more likely to leave the company or be quite unproductive, causing conflict in the workplace.
5. Encourage Team Collaboration
Higher levels of innovation lead to increased productivity and business growth. As a result, implementing a digital, collaborative workplace is vital for any company looking to fully collaborate their workforce.
Having a mobile app for your company intranet is also a good way of sharing company news with social feeds and timeline features – it enables your organisation to implement changes or gather valuable employee feedback, ultimately improving workforce productivity.
6. Champion Team Communication
All leaders know that clear communication is the key to success. An article by Smarp found that 72% of employees don’t fully understand their company’s strategy, making them feel out of the loop of important company information and disconnected from their organisation.
7. Focus on Employee Training
Your employee’s training plays a huge role in how prepared your team is for their job. The more prepared they are – the more productive they are likely to be. The training needs to allow employees to become familiar with their new company a lot quicker than if they were just researching it themselves. For example, companies may have their own internal tools, so training will be vital for employees to get to grips with the specific resources.
8. Ask for Feedback
Employee feedback is vital for management to improve on their internal comms strategy, communication and more. Therefore having a survey that employees can fill out on your company intranet is vital. Leadership is able to get the feedback it needs in a concise and collaborative way.
9. Be Appreciative
Recognition is a key motivator for employees and provides them with a sense of accomplishment and makes them feel valued for their hard work and efforts. Not only does appreciation make employees feel more confident in themselves, but it also improves productivity in the workplace.
When an employee receives praise for hard work, it reinforces their behaviour and makes them more likely to continue that behaviour. The statistics of employee appreciation speak for themselves; 72% of employees said that they would work harder if they were appreciated.
10. Value Transparency
As a leader, it’s important to be clear and concise with your employees when it comes to delegating tasks. If you have a big project coming up, make sure you outline the ‘SMART’ objectives of the task to your employees; this way they will be aware of what the task entails, what is expected of them and how they can measure their success.
