If things are running well in an office, things continue to do so much external management. That’s a fantastic thing to be happening.
How to reach this point? How to turn poorly working employees more productive?
Here’s how to improve productivity at work for your employees.
Power up workday.
With engaged employees you stand to gain a lot. Disengaged employees drag everyone else down with them and the truth is more than 70% of employees in the US feel disengaged.
That’s a steep cost to be paying.
When you ignore employee productivity that results in a toxic work environment. Such employees are absent more and have a high attrition rate.
A high attrition rate is an HR nightmare and results in lower profit.
It costs the US around $500 billion in lost productivity.
So here’s what you can do.
Give your team members the right tools to work with
Skills are essential to a positive work environment. Choose the right software to make your team’s work easier. It results in streamlined work environment for you.
Use Time and productivity tracking apps
There are hundreds of productivity tracking apps that your team can find help with. There are n number of tasks to complete in a day. And with a time tracking app like say RescueTime which I use to track how I work in day it’s easy to understand where my time goes. It’s still easier to log what the employees are doing and lift efficiency in one single shot.
Assign tasks to teach member so they know what they must do. This makes time tracking easy as well.
Screen capture and URL tracking too can be employed to understand employee productivity even more.
Use Collaboration tools
Team collaboration tools take off the load from you and simplify the work you need to do. Being able to collaborate together as remote or online employees is essential to getting things done. These collaboration tools come in a lot of flavors like Trello, Google suite and more.
Use Communication apps
Whether you are in an office or as part of a remote team communication is key to getting things done.
Communication apps can help you with this. Instant messaging apps like Slack that I use offers a light and streamlined interface to carry out conversations and see each others’ messages. It’s way less clunky and streamlined than any email interface. Slack is easy to use and keeps a fantastic job of keeping conversations organized and in a single place. File sharing access is a boost as well.
So use them to keep team workflow.
Recruit better
For Zappos recruiting is intensive. And they go to all possible lengths taking the first batch of recruits and running them through a month long training program. Even before that only those are screened and meet the family’s values make it to the list.
This ensures that only employees who fit the culture of the company make it through. It’s a critical selection criteria. THis is motivating to other employees.
Improve employee skills with training
Once hired there’s generally no focus on optimizing for productivity.
There are lots of skills you may ingrain in employees to boost their productivity. These skills range from handling a spreadsheet to developing time management. And soft skills as well.
Training improves what employees are being able to achieve within the day job.
Improve the process and don’t lose your mind with this.
Never micromanage
People don’t leave jobs. They leave their bosses. This could be found true in almost every context.
The most effective tool to improve productivity is to let employees do their thing. Let managers be reigned in.
Encourage productivity by helping people take ownership of their time and mistakes. They will make mistakes. But it’s also a wonderful way to encourage autonomy.
Manage less and get improved results.
Most managers tend to micromanage and they have a habit of it. They pencil in the tiniest of tasks and want control over operations, budget and problem solving.
To ask them to dial down is challenging.
If employees are nervous they tend to perform poorly.
Communicate Clearly
With business and a workplace right communication holds the key to success.
Without communication, relationships tend to fall apart. THose who effectively communicate their expectations and responsibilities tend to be rewarded with an engaged workforce who know what’s expected of them. They are highly productive as well.
Most work related conversations include assigning blame to each other.
Lower stress levels
Let me tell you an interesting statistic. Between 1996 and 2000 those who called in sick tripled. The most common source of stress?
Fears in the future and occupational pressures cause stress among Americans.
If employees shop and are stressed that means they are being emotionally and physically drained. That also means they’re not productive at all.
WHen someone is stressed everyone is stressed. It’s also not the right kind of stress either.
There are a number of things to foster a healthy work environment. This means doing a number of things like:
- listening to employees
- offering constructive feedback
- giving employees challenging, meaningful work
- establishing clear parameters for success
Get more done with remote work
It remains to be said that remote workers tend to be more productive. All the research says that. They log more hours, they are less sick, generally give a better performance and are happier at work and life.
This results in cost savings for the business.
A Gallup report from 2012 to 16 shows that the number of employees opting to work remotely went up from 39% to 43%
It Also found that the remote work has seen 103% growth in the non self employed category.