Whether you’re an up-and-coming business or a well-established company, you can never underestimate the value of employees. Multiple studies have actually provided solid reasons why employees are an organization’s most important asset.
In a nutshell, their roles and input are crucial determinants of the success or failure of your business.
But as an entrepreneur, employer, or HR department head, you can’t afford to be blind to one simple, giant fact. Whether or not your business achieves its goals and objectives will depend largely on how productive your employees are in their daily, weekly, or monthly tasks.
What Is Meant By Employee Productivity?
Employee productivity simply means the level of efficiency a company’s employees achieve in completing their respective tasks. It is usually measured using several factors carefully taken into account, including the time spent on a task, expended effort, work quality, and skill level.
Nonetheless, the output or results usually have the final say on whether an employee is productive or not.
The Importance of Employee Productivity
Having productive employees can mean a few things for any business. It could mean higher revenues and profitability, better customer satisfaction, and enhanced growth of the organization. The vice versa is also true!
A highly productive workforce can accomplish more, even when working remotely. The team members comprising it are also efficient, focused, and eager to achieve or exceed the set goals of the organization.
Besides increased profits and attracting customer loyalty, productivity helps reduce business costs associated with raw materials, labor, and capital, among other things.
5 Ways Employers and Managers Can Support Employees for Increased Productivity
We live in a diverse, highly competitive, and constantly evolving business environment. In this fierce environment, employees need various forms of support so they can best execute their roles. Having said this, some things you can do to support your staff and make them more productive include:
1. Pick the Right Managers or Team Leads
There are many reasons why employees fail to perform at their peak levels, but having the wrong team lead or manager is becoming increasingly common. So, before you make any other major hires for supervisory roles, you may want to think long and hard about whether you’ve hired the right person for the job.
From time to time, it also pays to find out from the existing employees what they think of their existing supervisory staff. Asking questions like how can your manager support you may also go a long way in ensuring your low-level staff gets the maximum support they need.
2. Equip Them with the Right Tools
Once you’ve recruited and hired the right team members, it is always advisable to equip them with the right tools that are required to do the job and serve you the best. Let’s face it; no one is capable of doing his/her work if there are no appropriate tools to use.
Modern-day workplace tools like smartphones, laptops, tablets, and smartwatches are an almost daily requirement, and today’s employers are fully aware of this fact.
You may also want to make use of productivity tools like Asana , Slack , and Basecamp, which enhance collaboration, streamline workflows and help maximize the output of your team.
3. Set Clear Priorities
Developing a company’s strategic vision is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your employees get the best results from their roles. Determine a series of priorities and ensure you get your employees on board with these. This brings us to the next important point – staff training!
4. Offer Employee Training
Employees tend to be more productive when they feel supported and cared for by their employers and superiors. Well, one of the best ways to become a good manager is through promoting staff professional and personal development.
This often starts with offering training on what the job entails when the employee first joins your company, as well as creating avenues for continuing education.
Employee training can be as simple as one-on-one interaction sessions where the employee is asked to describe their day-to-day tasks and how they manage certain situations at work, to the benefit of the organization.
Or, it could mean broader training sessions that can encompass a company’s entire workforce in a seminar format, where the entire team gets to participate in activities to better understand and interact with the technologies they work with every day.
5. Motivate Staff with Incentives and Promotions
Incentivizing your staff can be a great move when it comes to helping them become more productive. A few probable incentives you might want to consider include:
- Cash rewards
- Job promotion
- Recognition at monthly meetings
- Leadership classes
- Home/daily leave allowances
Some of these may seem quite basic, but the little things can go a long way in improving your employees’ productivity and engagement.
Conclusion
These are a few of the simple things you can do to make sure your staff gets the best job done and keeps delivering for your organization. In most cases, it involves making them feel supported and valuable to the company, so don’t forget to gather feedback and have them ask questions too.
And as long as you don’t overdo it, even a small gesture here and there can go a long way in making your employee more efficient and productive.