So how does one ensure employee satisfaction to improve their productivity? What turns an average employee into a productive one? Here are five easy and effective ways to achieve this:
- Track employee activity: To improve employee productivity, you need to first get acquainted with how exactly your employees are spending their time. By monitoring employee activity with a time tracking app, you get to know how much time an employee is spending on a particular task. Armed with this information, you can assign tasks in a more efficient way so as to improve work productivity. The best time tracking app allow you to track employee activity along with the option to customize reports based on your company-specific requirements. When employees are aware of their time being tracked, it compels them to stay focused. It makes them more alert about how they are spending their time which highly increases their productivity levels.
- Assign work as per capabilities: It is important for managers to review individual employee potential based on their work performance. Knowing this will help you understand an employees’ strengths and weaknesses. It is unjust to assume every employee can do the same task in the same way and in the same amount of time. When you identify work patterns and individual employee capabilities, you can determine who would be the best person for a particular job. Assigning tasks based on this knowledge helps in maximizing employee efficiency which ultimately increases their productivity.
- Improve communication: One of the major causes of reduction in employee productivity and delay in work delivery is lack of clear communication. Whether your team works remotely or in a traditional office set up, inadequate communication can derail the work schedule and reduce the overall team productivity. Improving communication and collaboration is mandatory to optimize productivity. As a manager you must clearly communicate expectations so your employees are aware of their goals. It is equally important to provide your team the right tools to facilitate collaboration.
- Recognize and reward: One of the most effective ways of fueling employee performance and increasing their productivity is recognizing what they bring to the table. Recognizing an employee’s contribution and appreciating their efforts makes them feel valued and motivates them to keep performing better. You will be surprised at how powerful public recognition in front of all team members can be for an employee. You can even go one step ahead and reward their performance. This also encourages other team members to try to achieve more in order to gain recognition/rewards.
- Avoid micromanagement: Managers often become obsessed and want to control what their employees are doing every minute of the day. This ends up doing more harm than good as employees start feeling their each step is being watched. As long as they are providing quality results in time, a manager should provide employees the autonomy to decide how they want to schedule their work. It is crucial to avoid micromanaging behavior like continuously fretting about every small detail as it can end up wasting more employee time when they have to constantly provide work updates. It can also lead to frustration if employees feel like they’re not being trusted for doing their job well. A stressed employee will never produce great results. Conclusion: We hope the above mentioned ideas will help you boost your employee productivity. Which of these resonated the most with you? Do you have any more tips to increase productivity in the workplace? We’d love to hear them in the comments below! About the author Costa Lamprou is the head of PPC at The Elearning Industry Network. With experience ranging from product development and sales to training and PPC, Costa helps eLearning businesses reach their full lead gen potential. When he isn’t helping clients succeed, Costa likes to expand his marketing horizons with the help of eLearning courses.
