Six Management Practices That Can Boost Employee Productivity

Close your eyes and imagine a world where all your employees could work at their full performance capacity, for every minute of every day. A world where your staff don’t steal glances at the clock every minute, and where they aren't taking their 10th coffee break within the hour.

Here are six tips to help boost employee productivity:

Understand your employee

Why is it they come to work? How should you communicate with them? Do they like to receive praise publicly or privately? How do they like to be rewarded, and how do they respond best to feedback? Understanding your employees on a more personal level means that you can cater tasks, feedback and incentives to boost their morale and improve their productivity

Carefully structured incentives 

As a general rule of thumb, a manager or director of a company shouldn’t expect an employee to work for the sole success of the enterprise. Employees may come for social gratification, financial stability, and a whole host of other reasons. When a task is seen to solely benefit senior levels, it will see junior level staff becoming unmotivated to reach the same goals to the best of their abilities. Employees must see worthy and valuable benefits and rewards of completing goals. This means that management should conduct motivation tests to understand the drive behind why employees come to work every day, and reward the team equal to their contribution and according to their desires.

Constantly providing meaningful and constructive feedback

Feedback systems should be implemented, and performance evaluation tests should be regularly conducted to identify talent gaps or to identify where employees excel.

Adequate training

From conducting feedback tests, management should employ talent management tools to improve staff in required areas. Employees who receive complimentary courses or trainings will feel that management is invested in their success and talent – whilst management benefits through their improved skill set and morale.

Personalising the job

Employees all work in different ways – and giving individuals the wrong tools can often cause them to work slowly and more unproductively. Allowing employees’ flexibility in how and when they work – providing that they have a good record of meeting deadlines – can allow them to work at a pace and in a way that is beneficial to both them and the company.

Give credit where it is due

Recognition reinforces good behavior, and allows the employee to realize that their good work has not gone unnoticed. Managers should assume that employees do not realise that they’re doing a good job, and give recognition to show their appreciation for the workers’ efforts.

Performance capacity is largely dictated by management practices, and a manager’s ability to maintain a constant level of motivation through the implementation of performance management activities. So what can you do to boost your employees’ performance?

Boosting employee productivity is not as simple as throwing around some cash. It grows from monitoring and improving your workplace through to understanding the employees, and allowing them to feel the benefits of their hard work. The employees should feel as if they are a valued member of the team.

Tools such as job satisfaction surveys can help you understand your employees, as well as identify what may need changing in your workplace. For more information on job satisfaction surveys, please visit the Psych Press webpage: http://psychpress.com.au/psychometric/talent-retain.asp?job-satisfaction-survey