Employee productivity is vital to your business’s success. Increasing employee productivity requires small business owners to motivate and engage their workers. If you’re a small business owner looking to ramp up productivity, you may face significant resource limitations. Driving productivity gains isn’t necessarily simple.
Investigate Underperformance Issues
It’s important to thoroughly understand why an employee might be underperforming. Avoid making assumptions by gathering data and information as well as addressing the person directly.
The employee might be lacking proper resources or maybe wasn’t adequately trained and onboarded from the start. There might be outside influences distracting them from doing their work and they could use some support from HR. It’s possible that the employee lacks clarity about the company goals or doesn’t feel valued or well-supported in their role.
It’s important to understand what the issues are in order to best tackle them and give them a chance for improvement. Trying to cover up issues with “quick-fix” solutions won’t help in the long-run.
Encourage Continual Communication
Clear and effective communication is essential for improving employee performance. Receiving negative feedback can be challenging and uncomfortable — both for management and the employee — but it’s important to foster an environment of transparency and direct communication.
It’s unrealistic to expect employees to change and improve without giving them concrete feedback and specific action points to work on. Also, team members should be encouraged to communicate their perspectives as well, regarding their progress, deadlines, expectations, and available resources.
A culture that rewards collaboration and sharing ideas can improve the energy on your team, help you cultivate innovation, and improve performance levels for everyone.
Foster A Positive Work Environment
According to Time Doctor, employees that feel happy with their work environments also perform better. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Think about how different you feel when the space around you is clean and tidy and the people around you are motivating and positive. Encouraging employees to personalize and de-clutter their space can encourage a more conducive environment for being productive.
This also means boosting team morale and ensuring positive communication within the team. Make sure employees have non work-related activities and events planned, and that everyone feels valued on their teams.
Training Doesn’t End At Onboarding
New employees are initially given a lot of attention and direction during their onboarding process. But this should not be the only training that employees receive. Ongoing training is a critical part of keeping employees engaged and motivated to think and work in new ways.
Also, it’s hard to retain so much information when everything is new and overwhelming. Continuous training with contextual learning allows employees to get refreshers and follow-up information in case anything was missed during initial onboarding.
Utilize Data And Platforms
In the digital era, measuring an employee’s performance can be very data-driven. Assessing time management, quality of tasks accomplished, and even the impact of work does not have to be subjective. In fact, by using HR analytics, employees can see analysis of their performance and managers can identify areas for improvement. Data takes the guesswork out of these metrics.
If employees know the specific metrics that will be measured and analysed, they can better self-manage and monitor their own performance. This is both empowering for employees, which promotes higher levels of motivation and conviction in doing a great job, and also gives them very practical tools for improving their performance with confidence.
Manage Performance To Encourage Growth
Overall, people are more motivated and productive when they feel supported, valued, and are set up with the necessary resources to complete their tasks. Managing the performance of employees requires an in-depth understanding of the individuals themselves and the ability to encourage their growth and development.
Setting the tone for a happy workplace also involves cultivating an aesthetically enjoyable environment. Allow employees to give input in regards to the design of their workspace. Maybe lighter is needed, or maybe finally updating the old paint to something fresh and bold could add positive vibes to the space. Encourage employees to take ownership of their environment, culture, and physical space.
Management of implementing employee performance improvements should be very concrete and goal-oriented.
