Employees need to be at the peak performance levels if they intend to produce great results at work. Today, more and more employees are spending more time in the office – far exceeding the recommended 40-hour workweek. However, increasing working hours can be counterproductive, essentially translating to decreased productivity.
It is also normal for employees to go through periods of performance dips due to factors like organizational gaffes, personal problems and stress. However, it is the duty of every business owner or manager to help their employees overcome these dips in order to achieve set business goals. Here are the top 5 techniques you can implement to increase your employees’ productivity in the office.
- Have Realistic Goals
Goal setting plays a critical role in increasing productivity within your office. However, these goals should be clearly set out and realistic. Having realistic goals does not depend on how complex they are; rather, they should be assigned to the relevant employees based on time and priority.
Did you know that your subconscious mind uses deadlines to unconsciously and consciously drive you towards achieving a goal on schedule? If the overall goal is big enough, break it into simpler sub-deadlines that lead to a bigger objective.
- Design Economic Incentives
The management has a natural tendency of focusing heavily on creating senior-level economic incentives and leaving out all other employees. This is understandable, but neglecting offering substantive incentives for lower-level employees can have an adverse effect on the performance of your enterprise. While rewarding everyone will definitely increase business costs, you can structure careful programs that take into account the additional payouts from clearly defined increased earnings and or revenue targets.
- Effective Communication
Communication is the key to a productive workforce, and technology allows people to connect to each at the touch of a button – meaning that current communication methods are all effective, right? On the contrary, some activities, like reading emails which have been revealed to be the second most time-wasting activity for employees, after job-specific tasks. Instead of solely relying on email, try other technological collaboration tools that are designed increase team collaboration and problem solving speeds.
Initial costs of setting up collaboration tools, like Stackify APM pricing, will more than pay for itself within a short time. You should also consider encouraging your employees to use some antiquated contact forms like voice-to-voice communication. A quick phone call or meeting can help settle a matter that could have taken up hours of email communication.
- Don’t Be Stingy – Emotionally
Management has nothing to gain by withholding recognition and praise, especially where it is warranted. In fact, recognition is a more powerful motivation method when compared to cash incentives. While this may not be applicable as you go up to the senior levels where financial rewards are greater, this sub-headline is focused on the general employee productivity – where the gains of saying a simple “thank you” or “great job” are far greater.
- Empower Employees
Employees love it when they feel empowered; a huge percent of employees actually state that the lack of empowerment was one of the reasons they quit their workplaces. Empowering employees means having them learn how to work independently without having someone standing over their shoulders all the time (micro-management), encouraging self-improvement initiatives, and presenting new opportunities and challenges. In such an atmosphere, your employees become more engaged and are likely to exceed your expectations.
Finally, these tips are not just suggestions. They are very well capable of increasing employee productivity. In the end, you will realize that a productive workforce is better at achieving organizational goals, offering better a Return on Investment, overall.
