Six Things You Can Do To Improve Employee Productivity

Work isn’t always the most fun place to be, but many people spend the majority of their weekday in the office. Staring at the cubicles and following the routine has the potential to take a huge toll on your employees, and that can really knock down productivity a few notches. If you aren’t doing anything to mitigate the problem, it’s an inevitable pitfall that can swallow the success of your business. Change things up a little, and you’ll see the results immediately.

1. Provide Excellent Training

Have you considered the possibility that your employees aren’t as productive as they could be, not because of outside factors, but because they simply weren’t afforded with the tools to do their jobs to the best of their abilities? Offering great training can help everyone understand aspects of the workplace a little better. Teaching your team how to navigate complicated software and providing everyone with superior workarounds to complicated issues will take your employees a long way.

2. Create an Atmosphere That Inspires Teamwork

On an average day, your employees are spending more time with their coworkers than they are with their families. You need to encourage them to strengthen their work relationships with each other. Create collective goals and celebrate those experiences. Encourage workplace traditions, such as fun themed days or potlucks. Inspiring your employees to have a sense of loyalty to each other will strengthen every link of the chain.

3. Offer Great Work-Life Balance

If your employees feel overworked and are missing out on valuable life experiences outside of the office, they’ll come to resent their jobs. Make sure everyone has a better work-life balance. This can mean providing them with flexible scheduling options, or the ability to cut out early when they’ve had an excellent day. Schedule meetings at reasonable times, and make it easy for your people to take an extra day off once in a while.

4. Provide Up-to-Date Technology

Ancient computers run much slower and cannot support technology that will optimize the inner-workings of your business. Options like cloud computing and work related smartphone apps will provide them with the ability to do their jobs better, easier, and faster. You can’t expect your employees to work at the pace of a cheetah when their equipment is running at the pace of a snail.

5. Keep Your Ears Open to Feedback

Your employees know the subtleties of their jobs better than you do. If something in your current system is holding people back, or adding unnecessary layers of complication to basic tasks, your employees will know. Allow them to relay this information to you, and be a good listener. Always be open to changes if they’re going to help everyone accomplish more. You need to be willing to see both sides of the coin when implementing policies and changes that affect everyone.

6. Offer Incentives That Show You Care

Everyone’s getting paid for the work that they do, but that’s just how working goes. How do your employees see that you care? This is especially important in situations where employees go above and beyond what’s expected. It could be as simple as buying someone a cup of coffee for a superstar performance in the office, or raffling off event tickets as a collective prize for outstanding teamwork. Going the extra mile will make everyone feel more appreciated, and that will encourage your employees to devote themselves and engage their passion in the workplace.

It’s crucial that you remember to be positive. If you’re showing yourself to be a capable, respectable, and caring leader, everyone will be happy to do all they can to help make every project a stellar project.

Clare Hawkins is a blogger and an employee at Local, deeply interested in the ways to improve and enhance any business performance. She enjoys spending her free time reading technology blogs and working in the garden.