The key to a truly successful business lies in the productivity of its every employee. Hard to believe?
With the global workforce shifting from a ‘hustle’ culture to ‘quiet quitting’ in the last few years, it’s becoming more natural to start wondering how to increase employee productivity.
Today’s productivity slump negatively affects global economic prosperity, causing toxic economic changes with a snowball effect.
What does the future hold for businesses?
Naturally, employee expectations change as time progresses, challenging HRs to redefine their strategies.
Your efforts to increase employee productivity will allow your employees to trust your business and think twice before considering their exit.
But first, let’s dive deeper into understanding the core meaning of productivity in an employee’s day-to-day life.
What’s the Definition of Employee Productivity?
Have you heard about the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear? It’s highly recognized for having some of the best concepts on productivity. In his definition of productivity, James says:
Thus, productivity is the metric for employees’ efficiency in completing responsibilities. This concept is essential to keep in mind when developing your approach to increasing employee productivity.
In economic terms, productivity refers to the number of goods and services workers produce for every hour they are employed.
That is to say, an employee’s productivity has a direct effect on business outcomes. Therefore, many businesses are investing in strategies to boost productivity levels.
Depending on your business type, the definition of productivity for your employees may vary. That’s because there are different factors regarding every business that may affect your staff’s productivity levels.
Factors Affecting Your Team’s Productivity
You may have to work on many areas before considering how to increase employee productivity.
Aspects that play a role in disrupted productivity can be:
1. The environment:
nobody thrives in a toxic environment.
2. Work processes:
clear procedures help employees to align tasks easier.
3. Lack of growth:
when employees feel stuck in the scope of their career, it’s easy to fall into being unproductive.
4. Unstructured payment system:
there are bills that your workers are obliged to pay. It’s crucial to establish a compensation structure and explain to your employees how you give promotions and raises to motivate them.
5. No tools – no motivation:
lack of necessary tools leads to employee disengagement, which lowers output, efficiency, and productivity.
6. Unappreciation:
when your employee’s efforts and diligence remain unnoticed, they might not work that much productively anymore.
Can You Measure Productivity?
Calculating employee productivity is the first step in understanding how to increase employee productivity.
Traditionally, productivity has been measured by raw output, which does not provide a deeper understanding of one’s efforts.
Nowadays, you can choose from many approaches to calculating productivity and pick one best suits your business. Here are some of the most useful ones:
- Organize daily catch-up calls/stand-ups, where the team will catch up on where they’re at regarding tasks.
- Set up key performance metrics for every role, which will define what a productive day/month looks like. Hitting that target will be motivating for your employee.
- Prioritize/track tasks and set deadlines instead of tracking hours spent at the desk.
- Define a tangible goal for your workforce or a department. The proportion of goals achieved shows employee efficiency.
Our Take on How to Increase Employee Productivity
Increasing employee productivity does not mean they have to work longer hours. It’s more about their engagement levels and how motivated an employee is in trusting you with their resources.
Center Your Efforts Around Employee Wellbeing
Burnout among employees across the company poses a threat to its continuity. Thus you should take it more seriously.
Create a strategy that considers employees’ emotional, physical, and financial health and well-being more comprehensively by offering competitive health insurance packages and encouraging self-care, for example.
Improve the Level of Employee Engagement
Employees who know their work is appreciated and rewarded consistently demonstrate higher productivity. They know that their efforts and time are always well-spent.
It’s crucial to give every employee consistent feedback on their performance from time to time. This way, your employees feel involved and give that involvement back in many ways. In other words – higher levels of engagement are guaranteed.
To ensure the longevity of this process, you can invest in software like Lucky Carrot, which can lay the groundwork for lasting employee productivity. Due to daily teamwork, teammates know one another’s struggles and victories better than any higher-level representative.
Lucky Carrot makes giving credit easier and more genuine by allowing your employees to appreciate one another’s hard work and cooperation for you.
Offer Your Workers Fewer Hours of Labour
Overwork causes burnout. To test that, more than two-five-hundred Icelanders, many of whom have desk employment, participated in recent studies in which they tried working fewer days per week.
Workers who were given more time for socializing and hobbies, as well as more leeway in managing household duties, reported feeling more energized and less stressed as a result.
Your fear that decreasing the hours dedicated to an employee’s responsibilities may decrease hitting the company’s overall targets is a groundless one.
You might actually see an increase in the ability to complete tasks if you allow the individual to work sequentially, focusing on a few things at a time.
By giving fewer hours for tasks, your employees may achieve even more company goals by focusing on the quality of the tasks that lead to achieving those goals.
Therefore, you’ll guarantee more efficiency and more productivity for your workers.
Allow Flexible Working Hours and Async Collaboration
Throughout the duration of the epidemic, work has undergone several changes. McKinsey estimates that the epidemic has cut three to four years off of the time it takes for firms to undergo digital transformation.
As a result, employees have adjusted their practices. According to the statistics provided by LinkedIn, remote positions, which account for around twenty percent of all jobs listed on LinkedIn, got more than fifty percent of all applications.
Work culture today is characterized by hybrid work. Moreover, employees demand updated procedures and more transparent communication.
To overcome the confusion:
- Set clear working guidelines and communicate them to your employees
- Reduce the number of meetings per day or optimize them since they cut down on time intended for deep work and creative flow.
- Encourage async communication and collaborative output. Here’s how: allowing your employees to submit their results at their desired time during the day rather than rushing for another “brainstorming session.” The best ideas, as a rule, come uninvited.
Detect and Cease Micromanagement
Let’s talk about micromanagement – the creativity-killing monster. People in tech, advertising, marketing, and other dominant career paths require creativity. It’s vital for the successful management and completion of their tasks, and micromanagement kills it with kindness.
When employees feel constant supervision in completing their tasks, they start doubting their abilities to overcome them successfully. Instead, you must determine specific outcomes and gently guide them in the beginning by providing guidelines. Then, you must give your employee the space and trust to meet the requirements of the assignment.
Provide the Necessary Training and Tools
About 37% of respondents in a recent poll identified possibilities for professional and personal development as key in their search for a new job.
According to Readwrite, for your employees to make the most of their abilities, they need constant training, so you should invest time and resources into training them. Employee training is crucial to work performance since training increases productivity.
Because qualified employee already knows precisely how to work on projects inside your organization, they can be in a position to assist workers who have a greater need for further training. You may provide monetary incentives for doing this activity if you want to increase the level of motivation among your workforce to complete it.
To ensure that your employees can do their jobs effectively, equip them with the proper communication and collaboration tools to be more productive.
If you found this post informative, you might also like our recent post on 10 Effective Employee Retention Strategies: Guide for 2023
Key Takeaways
You should invest time and money in various components aimed at increasing your employee productivity because they are the lifeblood of your business. It will only succeed with a robust and productive crew engaged daily.
Inevitably, employee expectations evolve, requiring human resources managers to redefine their strategies for the upcoming years. As a business owner or HR professional, you must ensure your team is engaged and have everything they need to perform well.
Above points, paired with our productivity tips, you can ensure that your employees are efficient workers and that your business stays competitive.
Take the chance to boost your team’s productivity levels with Lucky Carrot.
