How to increase employee productivity in the workplace

Figure 1:Source:Google:EmpMonitor

Introduction 

Employee productivity, also known as productivity in the workplace or workplace productivity, is the measure of an individual employee’s output (Buckley, et al., 2001).

Non-governmental organizations are facing a competing demand of providing high-quality services in front of reduced funds. Good management contributes positively to use their resources efficiently. These are some steps to implement to increase employee productivity in the workplace.

Focus on employees’ health, safety and wellbeing

Employers’ focus on health, safety and wellbeing of their employees is more obvious than ever before. Organizations need to put extra effort in these things in order to build trust among employees and keep their motivation and morale levels high (Derek & Laura, 1998). 

With only 47% of leaders feeling “very confident” of their ability to manage their employees’ well-being and morale, it is important that organizations continue to provide support to their employees and to recognize people’s individual challenges

Improve work place conditions

If you want to make your employees productive, you’ll need to make sure they’re working in optimal conditions.

• Make sure there’s plenty of natural light in the office. Employees who work in an office with windows and enough natural light sleep 46 minutes more at night – they’re more rested and more likely to focus when they come to work.

• Include plant-life in the office. Green offices make employees more comfortable, and thus more productive with their work.

• Don’t leave your wall colors white. Employees make more errors when they work in offices with white walls – instead, opt for red (it helps with detail-oriented tasks), green (it helps motivate), blue (it boosts creativity).

Allow flexible schedules

Different people have different productivity prime times during the day – so, sticking to a strict 9-to-5 schedule, or working hard from the earliest hours of the morning may not work for everyone.

• Make the work hours flexible – Instead of working 8 continuous hours per day, let your employees work in two smaller time blocks that together equal 8 hours
• Allow remote work – In spite of some remote work challenges, 65% of employees believe they’re more productive when they work outside of the office, and 47% wish their company provided this benefit. Select positions eligible to work remotely, define availability hours for remote workers, define specific response time, and instruct employees to log their time for productivity reports.

Recognize your employee’s efforts

Through this pandemic, some employees work double to keep up with business standards and run their businesses as usual. As COVID-19 has led to disruption in work and may cut down on employee engagement in some organizations, managers need to magnify their employee recognition efforts. 

Effective recognition not only motivates the employees and makes them more productive, but also sends a strong message to other employees about the preferred behaviors.

                                    

                                                                Figure 2:Source:Google:speechscotland.com

Provide better employee training

Training and development help improve employee knowledge, and then their work performance, by extension.

• Use specialized software. Learning Management Software, such as Lynda or Talent LMS, provides various useful courses that help employees expand on their old skills and learn some new ones. They also offer analytics and statistics, so you can track your employee progress.

• Provide hands-on training. This type of training lets the employees test out the efficacy of certain training tasks, by giving them the opportunity to try them as they learn about them.

Allow employees to learn at their own pace. Rushing through complicated topics won’t allow new knowledge to stick, or employees to test out their newfound skills. It’s best to leave employees’ time to process their training or learn at their own pace

                                         

                                          Figure 3: Video:Source : You Tube : How to increase employer productivity

Conclusion 

Once you’ve understood the importance of employee productivity for the success of your company, you’ll need to implement the right steps to measure, calculate, and most importantly, increase this valuable business resource.

In order to do so, you’ll need to pay equal attention to what’s beneficial for your company and what’s beneficial for your employees – make sure you improve workplace conditions, optimize emailing and meetings, allows flexible employee schedules, provide optimal employee training, refrain from micromanaging everything, improve office communication, as well as encourage employee self-care.

References

Buckley, M. R. et al., 2001. Ethical issues in human resources systems. Human Resource Management Review, Volume 12, pp. 11-29.

Dachler, H. P. & Enderle, G., 2009. Epistemological and ethical considerations in conceptualizing and implementing human resource management. Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 06, pp. 597-606.

Derek, T. & Laura, H., 1998. Human Resource Management. Europe. Prentice Hall: s.n.