You can’t ignore the fact that productivity of employees is the driver of your business. Certainly, we don’t diminish your contribution, but employees help you do the amount of work that you wouldn’t be able to do on your own.
So, if you want your business to be productive, then you have to cherish the productivity of your teams.
Inevitably, you will encounter factors that influence the staff in either good or bad way. So, you have to know which ones are good / bad and how to neutralize / enhance them.
What are the bad factors that reduce employee productivity?
1. Poor office planning
We know it’s impossible to give every employee their personal office, but make sure that every department has one.
Open space offices are not the best idea for an active working environment. Employees will constantly distract for their co-workers, no matter how loud the music is in their headphones.
2. Bad or no leadership
Both things are terrible. Bad leaders harm every member of their team. No leader means that employees do whatever they want, there is no common goal, and correspondingly – no result.
So, it’s important that every team has a leader that helps it excel, motivates and supports in times of crisis.
3. Internet problems
How frustrating it is when you can’t fully concentrate on your job because the Wi-Fi goes out too often. Or the page takes forever to upload.
You might think, what’s the problem? A 2013 survey by storage experts, Sandisk, revealed that the average worker wastes one week per year waiting for their company's network to respond. Now think of how much time and productivity your business is loosing.
So, how to increase employee productivity?
1. Different kinds of incentives
Every employee deserves to be encouraged. However, the incentives will have a different effect in each particular case. E.g., a bonus, “Thank you!” or “Great job!” is something that the majority of employees will enjoy.
But a book is something that only book-lovers will enjoy.
So, find out what motivates each of your employees. You can do that in various ways: ask them, let them pass a psychological test, etc.
And once you know, encourage! Thus, employees will be happier, more satisfied with their job, and, therefore, more productive
2. Well-developed skills
Often, the reason why employees can’t do something or do it in the wrong way is because they lack skills and knowledge.
Methods, tools and technologies are changing very quickly, so you need to constantly educate employees.
Send them to conferences, trainings, give them books to read, etc. Not only they will do their job better, but also can introduce new solutions, thereby increase business productivity.
3. Staying accounted for time
Time tracking is a relatively new way of increasing employee productivity. It is usually implemented to either streamline some business processes or monitor the work of remote employees, etc.
But in addition, multiple companies use time tracking to increase employee productivity and claim that the efficiency of time use increases by 20%.
Choose a time tracking system that builds time and productivity reports for employees, like Yaware.TimeTracker. This way, they can view their working time statistics and see what they could do to be more efficient.
And you can see what pushes employees off balance, what they distract for, which employees are overloaded and which could get some more done.
In conclusion
So, now you know how to increase employee productivity. What impact your employees in both good and bad ways.
As the old saying tells: “Forewarned means forearmed”.
