How to help your employees work smarter, not harder, regardless of your business model
Employee productivity can be impacted by many factors including workplace wellness, training and career development opportunities, the company’s culture, and many more. When it comes to productivity, there are a lot of things that business leaders need to consider, especially at a time when employees are paying attention to their work life more than ever before.
Whether you are a small- or medium-sized business owner, an HR professional or a manager, you have a unique opportunity to build a workplace environment and design the right productivity plan that will create highly effective and resilient teams that get the most out of their efforts. If you are having a hard time getting started with your employee productivity plan, read the following tips we gathered for you to help you build your strategies.
Promote Diversity & Inclusion
Diversity Equity and Inclusion, or DE&I, is not just about “meeting specific business KPI’s and ticking the boxes of ESG checklists, such as hiring people of different gender or color.” It is a powerful leadership tool for organizations to foster a culture of trust, collaboration, productivity, and optimal results. By acknowledging our conscious biases and through training to rethink and redefine the way we operate, we can build stronger and more productive teams.
Why it works: A conscious D&I approach helps create a diverse and inclusive environment that drives organizations to exceptional business results.
Encourage Learning & Development
By offering career development and skilling resources, you make sure your employees’ skills stay relevant while also you help them develop new skills. In this way, they are more likely to work more efficiently and grow internally.
Why it works: A good learning environment with ongoing training programs, enables employees to continually improve their skills and become more productive.
Develop a feedback culture
What is slowing down your employee’s productivity? Through feedback, you are able to gather valuable insights about how your employees feel, where they want to improve and what is blocking their productivity.
Why it works: By analyzing these insights, you can identify and eliminate what is hindering their growth journey.
Learn more ways you can develop a feedback and feedforward culture.
Invest in leadership development
Another way to increase employee productivity is by focusing on developing your leaders. Managers and leaders who know how to engage with their team, coach and guide them, and understand when they become disengaged are more likely to have productive employees.
Why it works: Capable business leaders can make a difference in employees’ productivity as they help people engage more and they create the right environment for their teams to unleash their potential, thus working more effectively.
Learn the Top Leadership Skills in 2023 and beyond
Work on employee engagement
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2022 report found that employee engagement is strongly linked to increased productivity, among others. Look for new ways to keep your workforce motivated and positively influence their engagement levels.
Why it works: Employees who are engaged will work quicker and more efficiently.
Bonus tip: Here are five ways to boost employee engagement
Support creativity and innovation
Creativity and productivity go hand in hand. Providing room for flexibility, creativity, and innovation, helps your employees express themselves in new ways and produce more quality work. Moreover, creativity boosts risk assessment and risk-taking and helps employees find out-of-the-box solutions to everyday workplace challenges.
Why it works: Through dedicated training programs that boost creativity and encourage innovation, you can maximize production and cultivate a powerful employee culture.
Build workplace wellness
From healthy-at-work snacks to financial benefits, training initiatives and more, wellbeing in the workplace is essential not only as an HR focus area but as a company-wide priority of all business leaders.
Why it works: A good and balanced workplace environment helps employees feel supported and productive while also contributing to an open and positive work culture.
Bonus tip: Mindfulness can influence your personal and professional workplace performance, therefore helping you improve your wellbeing at work and in life. Find out more details about it here.
Promote resilience
As the world is becoming more and more complex, it is important to help your employees become more resilient and able to address unexpected changes in the most effective way. By creating a framework of resilience for your organization, you help your people feel less uncertain and become more confident and productive.
Why it works: Being prepared to manage challenges effectively, means you are able to focus on what matters and bring better results.
Resiliency and how to get there!
Reduce remote work burnout
Work from home or remote work, which has now been established either exclusively or on a case-by-case basis by companies, challenges employees with managing time and resources. Staying focused and productive can be hard when working remotely, but the good news is that there are techniques to help you overcome all these challenges.
Why it works: By learning how to eliminate disruptions of remote work, you learn how to allocate your time and resources in the best possible way, and you become more focused and productive.
Offer incentives
Are your people happy with the benefits you offer? One more way you can boost employee productivity is to create initiatives that increase employee engagement. Rewards make employees feel valued and more motivated to reach specific targets.
Why it works: Fairly treated and paid employees become company ambassadors, stay engaged and productive.
So, regardless of your working model, keeping your employees productive is a marathon, not a sprint. Starting from your company’s culture and moving on to learning opportunities and innovative developmental incentives for your employees is the only way to win them over and see actual results in their productivity.
