In this fast-paced business world, productivity is not about employees presence. In fact, it’s all about their performance. As an entrepreneur, focus on building a work environment that supports choice, creativity, collaboration, and flexibility of employees to make it a success.
Employees performance is critical to the success of any business. It demonstrates you must work on the art of creating a work culture that focuses on your employees’ satisfaction.
According to the data
, employees spend 61% of their day in managing their tasks instead of doing them. Here are twenty-five productivity principles that can help you boost your employees and workplace productivity. Let’s take a look:
1. Think Membership, Not Ownership
The traditional work model, i.e., one employee per desk is not suitable in the current work culture. Today, the most productive companies work on building non-territorial neighborhoods or open work culture. These companies offer a wide range of work environments including IT stations, casual brainstorming spots, private spaces, and formal meeting zones, depending on the work type.
2. Clarity of Expectation
Your employees won’t be efficient if they don’t know what you expect from them. They need to know what their employers expect from them and what impact can their task completion makes on the company’s growth. A clear expectation plan helps your employees to relate their outcome to the actual picture and encourages them to do well. So be open and let your employees know what you expect from them.
3. Set Clear Goals and Provide Feedback
Every company has some small and big goals they want to achieve. If you set clear goals for your employees or personnel, they will be more motivated and work on it. By having a company vision and clear goals, you can encourage your employees to manage their speed while completing their targets. Also, it is important to provide feedback to employees as it helps them to improve and grow. Remember good management practices can help and enhance employee productivity.
4. Train Employees to Improve Productivity
Another workplace productive principle for your employees is to provide training to your clients from time to time. Hiring new employees can be time-consuming and expensive. So, the best way to save your time and money is helping employees learning new skills. This can be done by starting an employee development program in your company. This development plan may involve individual training, cross coaching, courses, mentoring, job shadowing, or even teaching employees to expand their responsibilities at the workplace. Ultimately, encouraging your workers to learn additional skills can help you boost their efficiency, loyalty, and productivity.
5. Introduce Delegation
Delegation plays a crucial role in employee development and enhancing workplace efficiency. Introducing delegation means assigning authority and responsibility to your employees to complete their goals independently. This is also a great way to offer an opportunity for your employees to polish their skills, leadership quality, and confidence.
6. Do more with Less
The “Ownership Model” of assigning a desk to every staff member is no longer viable, given that 50% of workstations will be empty on an average day on a typical organization. For instance, in Europe and North America, virtual meetings, telecommuting, and job sharing have significantly reduced workspace usage. (We have written a related article – Create a Seating Plan That Works Best for Your Team)
This emptiness directly results in unused office space and less-productive work environment. So, instead of working on expanding your workspace, work on making your current workspace motivated.
7. Give Choices to Improve Productivity
Being an owner, you should find a way to maintain a balance between supporting the productivity of an individual employee and team. When your workers have greater control over where and how they can work, this freedom makes them feel energized and motivated to do their jobs properly. It may sound illogical but staff members who are provided with greater autonomy are more loyal to a business, even without having personal workstations.
8. Match Tasks with Skills
Knowing the behavior and skills of your employees is another principle for maximizing employee efficiency. Not every employee is capable of managing everything. Some tasks need more thought, attention, skill, experience, and patience to fulfill them. If you want to make your tasks successful, do not just assign them to any of your employees. To improve workplace efficiency, make sure to match tasks requirements with employees’ skills before allotting them further.
9. Give Rewards based on Performance
Regardless of employees’ positions, recognizing them for a job well done makes them feel valued. Rewarding is another great idea to enhance workplace productivity as employees become more energetic and attentive to meet their business goals. While deciding the right way to reward deserving employees, keep these two factors into your mind.
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– Take the individual preference of employees into account
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– Match the rewards with the deed
10. Promote Wellness
Promoting wellness in the workplace is another idea to maximize workforce productivity. Incorporating a healthy work-life balance in your company is the best deal to improve workers’ health and leading them to feel less run down and active. Boosting a healthy work culture make your employees cope with stressful situations and make the most out of their working hours. (We have written a related article – What Are Workplace Wellness Activities? (26 Workplace Wellness Activities You Can Implement Today))
11. Enforce Transparency
Workplace Transparency is another essential principle most employers skip. A transparent work-culture not only helps you in operating a modern business appropriately but is also necessary to empower employee development. When you enforce transparency in your workplace, you’ll see a big shift in productivity. Instigate an open policy into your company, define your business strategies and values clearly, and motivate your employees to make thoughtful decisions.
12. Flexible Workspace Boosts Agility
In this fast-paced and evolving economy, businesses that are built on a supple culture make more benefits as their work-culture is wired with fluidity. Use of the right technology and workspace at the right time drives more innovation and creativity to take your business to the next level. (We have written a related article – Importance of Workplace Adaptability and Flexibility)
13. Boost a Culture to Learn from Mistakes
When employees make mistakes, rather than chastising them for their mistakes, employers should look into aspects that can be improved. Work with your team to find out the main reasons behind mistakes. Also, determine how things could have been done and what can you do to make them better. It will make your employees more responsible to complete their job responsibilities carefully.
14. Exchange of Ideas
In a healthy workplace, feedback requires to go both ways. Workers need to know how they are performing, where they can improve; and the same principle is applied to the employers and businesses. Employers should ask their employees what changes can be made to make their business success. This approach also works on making your employees feel valued for enhanced productivity.
15. Take Breaks & Mingle
Offering your workers with the opportunity to take breaks and bond with other employees can help in boosting workplace productivity. Encouraging workers to take breaks from their work schedule and socialize with other colleagues can help them boost their productivity. A great idea to bring your employees together is organizing company events. When employees feel connected, they are more likely to collaborate with others and work harder, which result in improved workplace productivity.
16. Use Appropriate Tools and Equipment
Providing workers with appropriate tools and equipment is essential to support them complete their tasks on time. There is a lot of technology in the market that can help employees organize and complete their duties effectively without sacrificing the pleasure of their personal lives. High-quality, latest tools make a massive difference not only on the performance of your employees but also on your workplace productivity. So, introduce the latest tools to your business for improved revenue.
17. Frequent Feedback Session
Conducting frequent feedback sessions is the main point you need to work on to build a strong and empowering work-culture. Being an employer, you should start regular feedback sessions with your employees to know what is going well and what things they want to change in the workplace. When feedback discussions become regular, your employees start feeling more confident to make the right decisions to benefit the business. (We have written a related article – What Is Workplace Feedback? (How to Effectively Give Workplace Feedback))
18. Break the Routine
Assigning specific duties to your employees as per their capabilities makes sense but having them perform the same tasks every day throughout a week can become tedious or even counter-productive eventually. If you don’t want your employees to feel bored, break the monotony by rotating their responsibilities from time to time and assign new jobs whenever possible. This approach can help you allow your workers to expand their skill-set and also offers them a deep understanding of how the company works.
19. Effective and Efficient Communication
Undoubtedly, communication plays an important part in business operations. If you don’t have an effective and efficient communication way, chances are you’ll feel difficulty in achieving your goals. Communication here doesn’t mean using devices like mobile only, but it means using appropriate means that help employees know the expertise and hierarchy within the company.
20. Use the rule of 90 minutes first
Make sure to start your first 90 minutes on the crucial task. The reason is during those 90 minutes, the human body operates on cycles on known “ultradian rhythms.” According to some research, the most active time is in the morning. An individual is energized and have willpower during the time and thus it results in maximum productivity.
21. Comfortable Workplace
Everyone loves working in a comfortable space, especially those who are working full-time in an office. According to research, environmental factors like temperature, noise conditions, and lighting can impact productivity and concentration in the workplace. If employees are happy with their physical environment, they are more likely to generate lucrative results.
22. Incentivize Employees
To encourage your employees, nothing can be more effective than giving them incentives. Make sure to recognize your employees for their work and make them feel appreciated. It encourages them to be productive in the workplace. In addition, don’t forget to say simple words of gratitude to make them feel privileged.
23. Think Big
There are a few things that might seem daunting to you, but when you adopt them, they might bring you an advantage in the long run. For example, investing in HR software. It is a wonderful tool that saves the time of your company and your employees as well. When you embrace HRIS technology, it will reduce frustration, improve efficiency and help your business grow.
24. Don’t Overload Yourself
The 8-hour shift should not be monotonous rather a fun you and your employees love to do. Usually, employers pile too much on themselves for a day. It overestimates how much they can do. It is wise to get into the habit of choosing 2-3 most crucial tasks for a day and make them perfect. Remember overload will never lead to productivity. So, take up less work but give 100% to it.
25. Quit Multitasking
Many of us think that multitasking is an important trait for increasing productivity and efficiency, but it is not true. Psychologists have found that attempting several tasks at one time can result in loss of time and productivity. Rather you should make a habit to complete one task first and then switch to the next one. (We have written a related article – 100 Ways to be Productive at Work)
Employee productivity is essential to every business. The more efficient your workforce is, the more successful you will be in your organization or business. By simply implementing these simple principles, you can boost the effectiveness of your employees dramatically. So, adopt these principles for improved work engagement, performance and productivity and energize your staff to impact the bottom line of your business. All these principles not only increase your employee productivity in the workplace but when you implement them, you’ll be amazed to see the results.
