Does your employee productivity need a boost? Most likely, the answer is yes!
Even if you think your company has little or no employee productivity issues, more than likely there is room for improvement to make sure your company is running at its best.
In order for your business to continue to thrive and be successful against your competition, you need to recognize how important your workers are to your business success.
Why is Employee Productivity Important?
Employee productivity is essential to every workplace as it improves the relationships with customers, increases the output of projects while optimizing the time it takes to complete, saves time and money spent, and increases company morale when your workforce is productive and satisfied with their work.
While the value of employee productivity should be fairly obvious, it’s easy to overlook some of the above.
But keep in mind that without a focus on productivity, your company could fall behind competitors and spend more time and resources catching up.
Effective Tips to Increase Employee Productivity
1. Measure Current Activity & Employee Productivity
Managers and business leaders will typically (and should be) monitoring employee productivity. This does not mean hovering or constantly micr0-managing, but evaluating employees on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly basis.
Before improving employee productivity you have to understand the data first. Look for trends in reports, analyze data, the number of employees in a particular department, etc.
Reporting will indicate what is working, as well as where gaps are that can be improved. Without this information, you are tackling a problem blindly.
This also means this type of reporting should be consistent to see where areas have been improved or why something that was fine before now seems to be an issue.
Things will continue to evolve over time, so being able to measure employee activity and productivity on a more consistent level will start you off on the correct path.
2. Incentivize Employees
Giving your team incentives will also boost employee productivity. I could end this section there, but I’ll elaborate a bit more.
What do I mean by incentives?
This could be gift cards, extra days off, bonus checks, or other smaller gifts and gestures. These gestures show good faith in your employees work and shows how much you value them.
The actual value of the incentive does not typically have as much importance as the recognition of great work.
Acknowledge your employees wins, no matter how large or small of a contribution it is. Your employees will continue to show their appreciation through their work.
If your company does not include some kind of incentive program currently, then consider adding a simple one. You’d be surprised how much this alone can help productivity.
3. Provide Proper Working Equipment
Compared to some of the other tips, you might think this isn’t that important. However, it needs to be included in this list.
Give your employees proper working office equipment!
Whether it’s computers, printers, updated software, etc. Without working equipment, you are hindering productivity right away.
I’ve heard fellow employees in the past getting frustrated with their office hardware. Whether a program takes 15 minutes to load, a bogged down computer, or printer jams — each slows employees down and can be frustrating.
Imagine similar issues extrapolated across your entire organization and how much time is wasted on mundane equipment issues.
This also does not mean you need to spend thousands every month and approve every employee equipment request. But save productivity headaches and provide working equipment.
4. Allow Employees Access to Social Networks
Many companies have strict internet and social media policies or block access entirely. While there indeed needs to be some regulation, there is a lot of missed opportunities too.
The internet is a vast resource, which employees could solve an issue or improve a process but having access to the internet and social.
Yet, I’m focused more on the social media aspect to this tip. Why?
With the popularity of networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, your employees have an opportunity to be a voice for your company. Allow your employees to become brand advocates, which also gives them opportunities to monitor competition and industry.
There is a huge opportunity to turn your employees into marketers and sellers — thus boost overall productivity.
Employees can use employee advocacy and social selling software like EveryoneSocial as well. This gives employees a platform to share interesting content on their networks. The content could be industry related, company resources, etc.
Since most employees will have social media accounts with followers, this content is much more valued and trusted than if a company handle was sharing information.
Without allowing social media, your company can miss huge sales and marketing opportunities.
Another point in this section: employees may feel like you don’t trust them by blocking social media or the internet. You’ve created a resentment in the work environment without really realizing it.
5. Treat Employees As Equals
All employees, no matter the role within the company, should be treated equally. Departments and the company leaders should never play favorites with their teams.
I’m sure everyone has seen this before at a job play out. This “favoritism” or providing special treatment to a select few will cause a divide within the company and can generate disgruntled employees.
And not only that, but it discourages employees from wanting to work and be productive for your team or the overall company.
You want happy and satisfied employees, who all feel appreciated and valued, no matter their role at the company.
6. Cultivate a Solid Company Culture
Build a positive and exciting company culture will go a long way for employee productivity.
Hire the right leadership, executives, and managers. Bad management can cause high turnover, effectively disrupting productivity. The good bosses and leaders will ensure employees will stick around and work harder.
If employees feel disconnected from the company, they won’t feel a need to contribute more than what is required or even care about their work.
No matter how great the job is or how much employees enjoy their work, leadership can completely ruin that.
Company culture helps more than employee productivity but can boost the success and sales of your overall business. Here are some more tips for building a winning company culture.
Final Thoughts
Improving employee productivity will always be a valid concern and is something your company should continue dedicating time to.
But if you take the six tips from above and start applying it to your workplace, you’ll begin to see a more productive environment.
Also, boosting employee productivity will not happen overnight. Stay focused and work with leaders to ensure your employees are crushing it for you and are happy to do so daily.
