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A company’s success and productivity are directly related to the productivity of its employees. If you are willing to achieve your goals, set higher targets and get the desired traction, you need to make sure that your employees achieve their targets and bring productivity to the company.
The management must keep track of employee productivity and work towards improving the same. As the needs of employees have changed significantly over time, it has become essential to cater to their needs and provide them with a conducive work environment to increase their productivity.
Employee engagement has always played an essential role in determining employee productivity within an organization. If your employees are genuinely driven towards their work and look forward to coming to work every morning, they are more likely to give their best and work harder to improve their productivity. On the other hand, disgruntled and dissatisfied employees tend to slack at work and bring productivity down.
This is why an organization needs to keep track of employee productivity and implement ways to increase the same over time. Although there is no standard procedure to measure employee productivity within an organization, here is a basic approach that will give you an idea about how productive your employees are.
The most commonly used method of measuring employee productivity is comparing an employee’s performance with the cost they bring to your organization. Here, the aim is to ascertain the value provided by an employee for the amount the company is spending behind them.
If you want to quantify the productivity of an employee, you can start by clearly defining the performance standard for your employees against which you will measure their productivity levels. Then, calculate the total amount of dedicated hours or minutes spent by your employees working in your organization. For example, if your employees work five days a week for eight hours every day, they spend 40 hours or 2400 minutes at work every week.
After calculating the time spent by your employees at work, deduct the hours or minutes that are not spent, adding to their productivity. This time includes lunch breaks, meetings, leaves, short office breaks and other time outside work hours.
For example, out of the total 2,400 minutes spent working, if your employee spends 30 minutes on lunch break, 30 minutes on other short breaks and one hour on meetings every day, you can deduct 500 hours from the weekly time spent by the employee working. This would imply that your employee is productive for 1,900 minutes in a week.
You can represent your employee’s productivity by dividing the net minutes spent working by the total work time available in a week. Sticking to the same example, the productivity of your employee would be 79%.
Related: 7 Ways to Enter the Productivity Zone Faster and Focus Better
Now that we’ve discussed quantifying employee productivity, here are some of the most important tips toward making your employees more productive at work.
1. Providing seamless employee support
A great deal of employee productivity depends on the support provided by the employer. It is common for employees to encounter issues while working — get them resolved in the best way possible. If you are willing to increase the productivity of your employees, make sure, you implement a modern service desk within your organization.
The modern employee service desk is a one-stop solution for a range of challenges faced by your employees. Driven by AI, it understands the context of the issues faced by your employees and provides them with solutions that are tailored just for them. Unlike traditional service desks that confuse employees with a manual ticketing system, the AI-driven alternative makes the ticketing system invisible, allowing your employees to auto-resolve their issues.
When your employees can get quick and personalized solutions to their problems, they will focus more on the work to be done — thereby increasing their productivity. Moreover, integrated employee support makes employees feel valued by the company, resulting in higher engagement.
2. Effective onboarding of employees
The first few weeks are always the defining ones for a new employee as well as the organization. This period builds a foundation for the journey your employee will take with your company. It is always crucial to onboard your employees effectively to increase their productivity.
Spend enough time to plan the onboarding process and divide the same into different phases. Always ensure that you make the new employees feel comfortable in the new work environment. Employees will be able to give their best only if they are comfortable with their new team members.
A great deal of employee onboarding is about giving a perfect welcome to your employees. Make sure you send a warm welcome (either personally or via email) to them. Send a personalized email with their login credentials for the platforms they will work on, details about their colleagues and leaders, company policies and what the company expects from them.
Always ensure that the new employees are provided with the necessary gadgets and res to work with from their very first day. Set up their laptops, desktops, and optimize them for ease of operation. Provide training to the new employees during their first few days and weeks in the company.
3. Delegating authorities and responsibilities
Especially in startups and SMEs, it is common for the entrepreneur and management to want to perform a range of tasks by themselves. One way to increase employee productivity is to delegate responsibilities and authority.
Assess the capabilities of your employees and allow capable employees to shoulder the responsibilities of handling a group of subordinates. Divide the work so that specific employees get to lead teams performing tasks they are best at. This will relieve the core management from performing multiple processes and effectively manage business processes across the organization.
4. Being well-versed with the skills of your employees
Always match the tasks allotted to your employees with their skills. Employees will naturally perform well if they are performing tasks that they love and are good at. Just like how letting a single employee perform a range of tasks is not advisable, making employees work outside of their comfort zone or skill set will lead to a decline in productivity.
5. Focusing on effective communication
The root of most evils is a lack of communication. Ensure you have enough provisions that allow the management to communicate with your employees and the employees to communicate with each other. Establish dedicated communication channels, whether they are personal, via phone calls, emails or video calls.
From communicating with your employees about their work, to encouraging casual conversations, it is important to establish effective communication across your organization to bring the best out of your employees — especially if they are working remotely.
6. Have well-defined goals
Unless your employees are aware of the specific goals and objectives to be achieved, they will not work in a dedicated direction and provide you with the desired results. Always make sure you communicate the goals you are willing to achieve to your employees. This will give them a push to work better and improve their quality of work.
7. Provide adequate incentives
Providing the right incentives to employees will genuinely motivate them to work harder and improve their productivity. However, it is important to understand that incentives should not be limited to monetary rewards. Here are some effective incentives that you can offer to your employees:
- Paid time off
- A handwritten note of gratitude
- Flexible work hours (on specific days)
- Access to workplace wellness program
- Dedicated trophies
8. Avoid overworking your employees
When your employees get overworked and exhausted, their productivity takes a hit — irrespective of the time they dedicate to work. Always encourage your employees to work only during their dedicated work hours, and avoid giving them tasks beyond their bandwidth.
9. Train your employees well
One of the most effective means of making your employees more productive is by providing them with extensive training. Arrange dedicated training sessions, webinars and workshops (online/offline) to help your employees develop new skills and nourish their existing ones.
10. Giving honest feedback
Finally, make sure you are completely transparent and honest with your employees while giving them feedback. Appreciating their achievements will motivate them to work harder, and pointing out their mistakes will help them improve their work.
Related: 36 Insanely Useful Productivity Hacks
These are some of the most effective tips to follow to increase employee productivity within your organization. What measures will you adopt to leverage the productivity of your employees?