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

Quirky Ways to Engage Your Employees

When it comes to motivating and engaging with your employees, sometimes it takes more than asking them about their weekend. Many managers and company directors dodge the unconventional ways of motivating employees as it seems a little silly and can appear counter-productive. However, little do they know that these cheap, unorthodox and strange activities can have lasting benefits to the employees, the company, and the bottom-line!

1. Hold fun monthly contests between departments. 

This can range from the most creatively decorated area, an ultimate cook-off, through to who can stack the highest tower of Oreos. Don’t forget to reward the winning team!

2. Keep a running game! 

Place a game of Chess, Checkers or a quiz in the tea room, and keep everybody interacting instead of sitting in silence during their breaks.

3. Celebrate birthdays, holidays, and occasions.

Personally create little company gifts, or better yet, match departments to get them to organise a collective surprise for another team. Set some grounds rules, as well as a nominal budget per department, and let them be as creative as they want!

4. Get suggestions. 

Instead of trying to guess what your team wants, place little check-box slips with events and ideas and get all individuals to number what they want most.

5. Celebrate success!

Make a habit of celebrating the smallest of achievements. Secured a big client or important contract? Get a cake! Increased the base of email subscribers by 5%? Have some chocolate!

6. Survival simulation games.

If you are on a boat that breaks down and only have limited resources, how will your team cope? Situational simulations are great ways to get all members interacting with each other and thinking like a team.

7. Daggy-dress day. 

Get all members to wear one completely outrageous and hideous accessory to the office. Capture it with a camera and stick it up on a cork board. This is a sure way to get people to lighten up and crack a smile.

8. Fact of the day. 

Assign each member a day; ask them to find a fact and to write it up on the white-board in the morning.

9. Start the weekend sooner.

According to a survey conducted by British Airways, productivity levels rapidly decline at 2:39pm on a Friday. Make it clear to your employees that you don’t expect them to be as productive on a Friday afternoon, and they are free to leave if they wish (provided of course that they’ve completed the required tasks for the week!). This may lead to employees working harder and faster throughout the week in order to leave early on Friday afternoons.

10. Be weird and crazy. 

Blast ‘Eye of the Tiger’ from your office when you’re feeling unmotivated or ‘I Will Survive’ when teams are feeling tense. Foster a supportive work environment, and show that you trust that everyone can ‘bounce back’ from a rough day.

11. Scheduled breaks. 

These may seem counter-productive, but being tired causes people to be less productive and creative. Giving employees a break for a quick power-nap or to meditate allows people to rejuvenate, regain their energy, and be able to think more creatively.

There’s a whole list of things that haven’t been mentioned – but these are sure to get you started! Little fun changes in the workplace can help lift unwanted pressure off your workers, and create a more fun, productive, stress-free and creative environment. It builds the team up, allows them to be more supportive, to feel supported, and to stay motivated and committed to the company. If you can get your employees truly committed to the company, you can be sure to trust that they’ll do the best by you. 



Alignment between a company's culture and its employees is also essential to ensure that your staff are operating in an environment they feel comfortable in and can engage with. To work out whether the employees you hire have the potential to fit your company's culture, use a Psychometric Assessment! To find out more about how Psychometric tests can help your organisation see how Psychometric Assessments can help your hiring decisions. If you are interested in learning more about Psychometric Assessments, please speak with Dr. Gavin Didsbury or a consultant from our assessment partner PsychPress who provide a variety of psychometric assessment solutions. Please call on (03) 9670 0590 or email info@psychpress.com.au.

3 steps to prevent work procrastination

Procrastination is the bane of human existence. Everyone has done it before and no doubt we have all done it at work, but why do we do it? Procrastination is characterised by high impulsivity and low conscientiousness and ultimately induces stress. Often people confuse procrastination with prioritisation by convincing themselves that the current work they’re doing isn’t their top priority. However, this is a common pitfall and we must learn to recognise whether or not we are actually prioritising or procrastinating.

Here are some handy tips to help prevent you from procrastinating at work: 

• Recognise the signs

One of the first signs that you’re about to let yourself procrastinate is what we like to call “Priority Conditions”.

One of the big red flags of procrastination is the use of this sentence “If I do [e.g. drink a cup of coffee] first, then I can start my work”. However, we all know that several cups of coffee later we still won’t have started. This line of thinking can create a vicious cycle of non-working as we created our own mental hurdle that we constantly make more difficult to justify not working. Does this relieve our anxiety about doing our work? Certainly not.

Suggested Solution: Once you recognise these 'Priority Conditions', you can then try to reverse the conditional order to ensure the right tasks are being prioritised first. Rather than “If I do [e.g. drink a cup of coffee] first, then I can start my work”, instead try “If I do my work for an hour, then I can reward myself with a cup of coffee”. This way we allow ourselves to create obtainable goals with a foreseeable break. This will reduce our stress levels and create a structure where we can start to get ourselves organised.

• Start small

We all know that taking on too much at once is a sure fire way to make it collapse, especially in a multitasking work environment. Set small goals and you’ll find yourself making slow and steady progress until, before you know it, you’re an efficient and effective worker again. Small scale goals, such as “in one hour I will do what I can and then take a break”, will reduce your work stress and increase your work satisfaction. Once this becomes easy, begin increasing the time so that you maximise the productivity of your work day. If it ever gets too much to handle, remember to pull it back one step until you are comfortable again.

• Repeat the changed behaviour as much as you can

The more that you work on doing something, the more likely it is to become wired in your brain. This is not something that will change overnight, however, with repetition and effort you can change your work behaviours over time and maximise your productivity.

So, if you feel yourself prioritising pointless tasks over the work needed to be done, take heed! Think of the stress you can prevent, not to mention the productivity you will gain, from simply recognising these signs and setting small goals for yourself.

As well as improving your productivity, there are also systems available to enhance your work environment and satisfaction. Psych Press has numerous assessments available that can pinpoint workplace issues and use organisational psychology to track down the best solutions for your human function. View Psych Press' Climate Survey or alternatively talk to one of their psychologists at 03 9670 0590

Work-life Balance: Achieving Productivity through Simple Changes

Australians in nearly all professions are feeling compelled to work longer hours and take their work home more often. Even if hours become longer, it is important to draw a clear distinction between activities inside and outside of work. Work-life balance is no longer a perk but a necessity, and when you break things down it is achievable!  The benefits are clear; individuals who have a good work-life balance are more likely to:

•  Produce more effective results
•  Have lower levels of stress, burnout and subsequently absenteeism
• Work 21% harder than those without work-life balance
• Maintain performance levels and the ability to do their job

Encouraging employees to implement a schedule that allows them to partake in leisure activities they enjoy outside of work will help them to become better friends, family members and employees. Although this balance is not easy to achieve and in some careers, hard to accommodate for, it is essential in enabling employees to return to work feeling refreshed and ready to do their job. After all, without a work-life balance employees aren’t able to enjoy the life they have worked so hard to create. 

As always, the best way to build a workplace culture that appreciates and understands this is to lead by example, so try out some of the below:

• Go for a weekly jog with your staff or kick the footy outside during lunch
• If you run training or development programs, include an active team building activity
• If people need to work later on certain occasions; make it up to them with a morning tea or take them out to lunch
• Share links to popular events that employees can do with their family

Don’t forget; a positive work-life balance will create an increased sense of well-being and help save time and money lost in sick days, stress leave, and even turnover.