Last Updated on Mar 13, 2020 by James W
As a business owner, you know that your employees are invaluable to your business, they are the cogs that make the machine run properly. In other words, your employees are the key to your businesses growth and success. But what happens when you feel like employee productivity has dropped, what is the best way to handle it?
Dealing with employees who are unproductive at work can be tricky, especially if you are unsure of the best way to handle it. Your best bet for encouraging an employee to be more productive at work is to show them that you appreciate what they do and think of them as a person and not just a number.
Here is our simple four-step-guide to increasing workplace productivity:
- Create a friendly atmosphere
We don’t mean you should spend the afternoon drinking beer and getting your favourite employees drunk. Instead, make time to see how each employee is getting on, chat to them and make the effort to get to know each employee personally.
Make sure your employees know that if they have any problems that your door is always open, and they can discuss them with you at any time. Make yourself an active part of the working environment and let employees know that you are happy to get involved.
- Know what drives your employees
Do some research into each of your employees backgrounds and find out what it is that motivates them. For example, an employee who is working simply to be able to feed their kids will have different motivations to an employee working to get to the top.
Understanding what motivates each employee will allow you to put support and different strategies in place to help motivate each member of your team.
- Implement lots of staff training
Staff training is crucial for a productive and motivated workforce. An employee who haven’t been properly trained won’t know the correct strategies and processes and may struggle to keep on top of their workload.
To ensure that all employees are up to date on your strategies and processes, it is vital that you implement regular training days and events.
By providing your employees with various training events, you are investing in them, which shows your employees that you value and care about their success. This is an excellent motivator, as staff who know that you value them, will be happier to put in more effort and work harder.
- Use incentives
Believe it or not, small incentives can go a long way to increasing employee productivity and motivation. You would be amazed at how powerful a simple gift card can be at boosting productivity in the workplace.
Create a staff incentive scheme where each week the ten members of staff who have worked hardest or come up with the best ideas, get given an incentive. This can be anything from a gift card for a restaurant to a bottle of sparkling wine or an extra days holiday.
Increasing staff productivity isn’t difficult to do, all you need to do is show your employees that they are valued.
