More and more employers today realize that their revenue depends not only on the number of sales/clients they’ve got, but also to a great extend – on their employees. Or, rather, their productivity. This metrics basically shows how much work is done during the same period of time. While it definitely is different for different employees due to a number of factors, the overall picture throughout the company can be pretty descriptive.
Essentially, productivity isn’t a stiff figure, and can fluctuate in both ways. So, if you manage to get your employees handle more tasks during the same working hours, it can decrease the necessity of extra hires to accommodate the growing volumes of work. This is a tempting perspective in view of the potential savings it drives. So how to increase employee productivity?
A Roadmap to Higher Productivity
All-in-one way
Often, the efficiency improvements are halted as employers don’t know where to start. In this case, agencies that specialize in this area come to the rescue. Basically, you get professionals in the sphere working on the premises for your company for about 16 to 24 weeks, implementing the previously agreed plan. However, this is going to cost you quite a lot, so if you want to achieve higher efficiency for saving resources, you may turn out spending more than receiving.
DIY way
If you’re not willing to invest a lot, but still determined to see your productivity graph go up, it is not that hard. In this post, we offer you a combination of ways of boosting work efficiency that will cost you mostly time and some efforts.
Set clear goals
Your staff should have the “leading light” to see where they are moving. So, inform them of the company goals, set the objectives for each department and employee (if applicable). This helps bear the routine tasks with understanding the “higher aim”. Moreover, getting close to the goal and achieving it makes the person feel satisfied and proud, which reflects on their work.
Plan and prioritize
Another way of promoting higher productivity is careful planning that includes prioritizing tasks and good timing. For instance, most people feature better efficiency in the morning. So, instead of scheduling a long meeting at the start of the day, encourage your staff to use this time for the most important task on their daily agenda. Similarly, make sure they know which assignments are top priority, and which are less demanding to help team members distribute their time and efforts adequately.
Develop a rewards system
People should have some material interest in working better, so let them know what they will receive if …(paste what is your current productivity goal). This can also cause healthy competition among staff members, which is beneficial for productivity.
Build trust and delegate
As an employer, learn to delegate even important tasks to your subordinates and build trust within the team. This helps every employee feel important, and do their best in order to confirm they can be relied upon. Moreover, comfortable atmosphere at the workplace is an important factor helping people realize their potential. Remember, though, that once you assign a task to a person, interfering and telling how to do it isn’t the best idea. But nobody said you shouldn’t control the process.
Let them work from home/have flexible schedule
This is a proven way to achieve higher employee efficiency, but one that is often feared by employers due to lack of control. In fact, there are cost-effective means of monitoring what your employees are occupied with when not present at the office.
Implement productivity software
Yaware.TimeTracker, for instance, is a time tracking tool that promotes productive work in a number of ways:
- it tracks employee activity on their computers throughout the day and builds reports on what resources were used and for how long;
- it counts overall hours worked, so monitoring distant employees and introducing flexible schedule is reality, each minute will be counted and fair compensation ensured;
- it records all breaks, their duration and can request for their reason, so you’ll know for sure who takes the duties too lightly;
- it categorizes all websites/software used as productive/unproductive/neutral and provides productivity evaluation, enabling to see the progress for each employee/department in numbers;
- it helps employees detect the biggest distractions and most time consuming activities by providing access to personal stats;
- it saves the employer’s time by providing comprehensive reports, and lets stay in total control, but not to interfere with the work of his/her subordinates unless needed;
- it saves the data in the cloud, so it’s accessible anytime from anywhere, which is convenient for a frequently travelling boss;
- it leads to at least 20% productivity boost upon implementation and costs only $8 per employee a month.
You can easily check out all the benefits of our time tracking software without spending a cent. Simply sign up for Yaware.Timetracker and make use of your 14-day free trial. You’ll have enough time to make your decision, no risk, no strings attached.
