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

Is a pay raise the only way to reward employees?

If you have an employee that always shows up on time, obliterates their KPIs and is an overall high achiever, you may feel as though they deserve a raise. However, times are financially tough, and you may not have the sufficient funds to do so. What are you to do? Keep things the way they are until they leave for a higher paying job?

When a pay raise is not an option you need to utilise employee retention strategies, whereby you seek to retain the number of exceptional employees that work with you.

Conducting job satisfaction and culture/climate surveys would be a helpful place to start. These allow you to recognise what employees think is going well and what can be improved.  This information will give you a basic insight into what your employees are thinking/feeling and you can build your retention strategies from these results.

Something as simple as providing a morning tea once a week, for example, could allow staff to feel wanted and is little perk to look forward to.

Offering formal training and career development opportunities is key to maintaining employees. It allows employees to view their career path at the company, and lets them to see themselves as an investment, and you as the investor.

Look into offering flexible working hours, and working from home options, as it allows employees once again feel valued and listened to and may be worth more than a raise, particularly for a parent raising children.

Communicate with your staff. Let them know the great job they are doing, and how much you value their work. The benefits that positive feedback and encouragement from management can provide employees are amazing!

For a growing company, if you don’t already have a Human Resources manager, get one into the fold; they could take huge load off a manager. They will be responsible for implementing such programs and may have their own ideas, as it is their area of expertise.

There are incentives you can offer your staff other than a raise, which still make employees feel valued and wanted. Importantly, they won't hurt your bottom line! If your business can’t offer the same cash as other businesses you need to differentiate yourselves in other forms, and make your company a desirable place to work.