Productivity in the Workplace

Finnegan Pierson

Tips To Increasing Staff Productivity

As a business owner, you are continually looking for ways to get your employees churning out more work. The more they produce, the more money the company makes. What can you do when motivation seems to be at an all-time low? While some of this is due to normal fluctuations in the business, you still believe the entire workforce can do better. Scroll through some of these tips to give your staff a kick in the right direction when work production starts to slide downhill.

Help Employees Set Personal Growth Goals

Some of the most successful businesses are also some of the most enabling. Companies that routinely check in with employees through face-to-face reviews and goal-setting sessions seem to see the least turnover and the most production. While no two employees are the same, most want to achieve something within a company. Whether that is a job in management or a position in another department, there are always goals to reach. Taking the time to sit with staff to create a plan for attaining those goals can work wonders for morale and productivity.

Listen To What Employees Have To Say

To have a successful business, you have to take customer feedback into account and make improvements where relevant. The same holds for employee feedback. Whether you utilize performance management software or anonymous surveys and ballots, ask employees about what the like about the workplace and what they would improve. Once you gather this data, prepare a plan to undertake some of the changes suggested. Listening to reasonable suggestions of your workforce will gain some confidence in your leadership and the company as a whole. Employees who feel seen and heard will work harder.

Incentivize and Energize

Employees love it when management rewards them for doing something extra. Design a program that incentivizes employees to perform more. Don't make the goal too lofty, or you will be met with discouragement. While you can certainly make the endgame extreme, you should have benchmarks along the way that, when met, get rewarded. Make the rewards big enough to grab people's interest. Some ideas include:

• Free lunches or dinners at lavish restaurants
• Spa services
• Golf outing
• Cash bonuses
• Gift card trees

You can even create a raffle or lottery system for each month. Do so by entering everyone's name who met any benchmark into a drawing for a more lavish gift. This gives employees twice the motivation every month to meet or exceed goals. Programs like this tend to energize the staff.

Meet Often for Feedback

Along with reviews and goal-setting, employees like to get feedback on the kind of job they're doing. Positive or negative, people want to know where they stand in the eyes of their boss. After a project is complete, it's a good idea to sit down with team members to go over what worked and what needed improvement. Keeping all comments upbeat, even the negative ones, will come across a lot better than using a tough tone. Create a mentoring program and pair seasoned employees and newbies to help with guidance and questions.

Gender and Productivity

In the battle of the sexes, which comes out ahead in terms of completing the most work? While the results are often close, women come out with a slight advantage, producing more work than their male counterparts. Data from the Department of Labor suggests that men work more hours, but other studies indicate that this is misleading. While men may work more hours, women complete almost 10% more work than men in their same positions. While these figures can't necessarily be checked, you may want to take a look at the differences in productivity between the sexes in your company to see if this checks out.

Happiness and confidence will make workers want to go above and beyond. Boosting productivity in your company may come down to communication and empowerment. Creating a positive workplace involves management who want to help staff reach goals and rewards them for a job well done. This practice will help make employees strive to reach the next level of productivity.