Proven Methods of Increasing Workplace Productivity
Strong workplace productivity separates ambitious, well-run businesses from stagnant firms with disaffected staff. The best companies run like well-oiled machines, but low workplace productivity reflects a team performing well under-par. However, when business leaders understand workplace productivity and take steps to improve it, they revolutionise their companies and revitalise their working environments.
Employing tactics from transparency to motivation and accountability, businesses increase their productivity and reap the benefits. As improving workplace productivity benefits owners, staff, and clients alike, companies should consider a range of proven productivity tips to optimise their workflows.
1. Improving Team Morale
Happy, healthy workers make happy, healthy businesses. Business leaders improve workplace productivity when they create enjoyable workplaces with dedicated workers. Effective working requires commitment from each and every employee, and unhappy colleagues become unlikely to give it their all. Improving team morale involves recognising good work and supporting struggling employees. The broad umbrella term ‘improving team morale’ becomes easier to enact when business leaders look to specific, practical examples.
2. Building Workplace Productivity With Training and Upskilling
Providing practical training fulfils one such example. On-the-job upskilling opportunities prove increasingly desirable for new employees. Implementing such a policy, and advertising it in new job postings, attracts ambitious and productive workers. Providing training shows a firm’s dedication to its workers and a belief in their potential. Workers then repay this trust with loyalty, productivity, and skilful work.
3. Hiring Productive Workers
Productivity involves the relationship between the workers and their business. Sometimes, people don’t suit their jobs, and these bad fits create critical slumps in output. While it may be too late to change these employees’ outlooks, businesses can future-proof their productivity by tailoring their hiring process in the future. Detailed job descriptions, thorough interviews, and practical tasks help bring keen and effective workers to efficient, productive workplaces.
4. Creating Productive Targets and Goals
Firms upgrade their efficiency and productivity with achievable quotas and goals. Just as individuals regiment their time with a to-do list, and rejoice when ticking off each task, businesses improve their workplace productivity with timeframes and targets. Productive firms shape these targets in dialogue with their workers, reward completion, and monitor delays. This information lets managers hone productivity task by task.
5. Building Team Engagement
Passionate employees dedicate their complete focus to the tasks at hand, boosting workplace productivity. Businesses seek to build team engagement in their workflow to support this dedication. The most successful methods often highlight the staff themselves. Tailored projects and specialised teams foster team engagement in productive firms.
6. Keeping It Interesting
Monotony often saps productivity, boring employees and clients alike. The biggest, most competitive firms recognise this trend and innovate to stay productive and relevant. Developing new projects, creative rebrands, and fresh endeavours helps re-introduce vitality and vibrance into a firm’s work ethic. Listening to employee ideas informs this freshness while turbo-charging engagement and workplace productivity.
7. Building Communication, Trust And Workplace Productivity
Firms prove their trust and dedication to workers by listening to their concerns and taking noticeable action to solve them. Open-door policies work wonders for work ethic, and businesses build workplace productivity on these foundations of honesty and trust. Anonymous suggestion boxes also promote honesty and allow firms to develop their business without oversight or error.
8. Increasing Workplace Productivity With Non-Invasive Reviews and Meetings
While listening to employees and discussing progress helps workflows develop, firms can clog up their schedules with endless meetings and admin. Overbearing meetings and check-ins manifest micro-management, creating disturbances throughout the day. By contrast, short, effective meetings get the job done without destroying the schedule. Non-invasive digital surveys and review forums also promote healthy discussion and productive collaboration.
9. Reducing Workplace Distractions
The most productive workplaces strike a balance between friendly and focussed moods. Removing loud noises, unnecessary emails, and pointless paperwork keeps the workplace calm and effective. On the other hand, policing employee activity with an iron fist creates toxicity, hence the need for a productive balance.
10. Improving the Working Environment
Productivity requires the proper conditions to flourish, so businesses improve their workspaces to propagate their productivity. Studies show that small changes such as more natural light, brighter spaces, and even introducing decorative office plants can increase productivity by 15%. In this case, as in many others, the financial and moral incentives to improve the workspace go hand in hand.
11. Letting Workers Customise Their Space
Workers collaborate and specialise to produce their work. Mirroring this trend, workers increase their productivity when they independently personalise their workstations. Employees conduct their best work from stations tailored with personal flair. Placing trust in workers to shape their own environments also boosts engagement and dedication in the workforce.
12. Investing In Effective Equipment And Resources
Ageing equipment limits many businesses from optimising their workplace productivity. Upgrading this equipment adds speed, quality, and new capabilities to the firm. The same goes for software, as new services like time and attendance systems streamline businesses. Such investment shows a firm’s worthiness and industry-leading potential to workers and clients alike, developing demand and increasing workplace productivity.
13. Increasing Workplace Productivity By Decreasing Burnout
Burnout hinders workforces now more than ever. To combat this burnout and safeguard productivity, business leaders should be equally strict in ensuring employees work hard and take breaks in between. Firms boost their productivity by making unsustainable workaholism and futile overworking a thing of the past.
14. Welcoming Flexible Working
Flexible working soared in popularity throughout 2020. Both firms and workforces made the most of flexible working’s benefits, maintaining productivity despite the many obstacles in the way. Flexible and remote working protects businesses from illnesses, burnout, and low productivity. It also proves an effective tool in attracting the most productive and forward-thinking prospective employees onto the payroll.
15. Empathetic Accountability And Monitoring
Absenteeism and low engagement decimate productivity, and noticing and addressing these problems help businesses function healthily. Rather than simply punishing unproductive employees, accountability and appraisals can create a source of support. Unproductivity issues often stem from employee or business disfunction. Getting to the bottom of this disfunction safeguards productivity for current and future employees. Business leaders smooth workflow disruptions by supporting workers through personal crises and nipping business conflicts in the bud.
16. Rewarding Workplace Productivity
Paired with effective accountability, rewarding hard work incentivises productivity and celebrates success. These celebrations prove productive in themselves, as they boost morale and create positive role models throughout the business. When employees receive no recognition for their hard work, they may view their efforts as unimportant. Therefore, recognising achievement teaches individuals and companies what to aim for, boosting productivity and lowering churn.
17. Incentivising Productivity With Bonuses and Perks
These rewards range from simple thankyous and smiles to financial bonuses and pay rises. In between these two options lies a range of productivity-boosting perks and rewards. Many firms institute ’employee of the month’ schemes to incentivise productivity, while others award productive new starters and noticeable changes in individual effort. Such celebrations range wildly in cost and value, but they all share the effect of increasing workplace productivity.
18. Ensuring Healthy Work-life Balances To Support Workplace Productivity
Businesses combat burnout by encouraging their employees to lead healthy, well-rounded lifestyles. Good work requires good health, and business leaders support worker health by promoting exercise, subsidising gym memberships, or even including gyms and recreational rooms in the office. Team building exercises and activities also support mental health, physical fitness, and team cohesion. Investing in the workforce’s work-life balance creates sustainable workflows, increasing workplace productivity.
19. Productive Rotas And Project Delegation
Besides welcoming flexible shifts, workplaces tailor their rotas and taskforces to complete each project as it arises. Planning staffing in advance creates effective collaboration and optimised productivity. Sharing responsibilities empowers employees to be their most confident and productive selves. However, such adaptive scheduling and task distribution requires active and reactive time and attendance software to function smoothly.
20. Holidays, Overtime And Volunteering Days
Workers trust their employers to honour their hard-earned overtime and remember their holiday requests. Breaking this trust sours the workplace culture, undermining workplace productivity. When firms use reliable, efficient time and attendance systems, they build businesses to believe in. Such systems also allow scheduled volunteering and development days, boosting employee capabilities and wellbeing. Effective rota systems take pressure off employers and administrators, allowing for optimised workplace productivity.
Conclusions: Proven Methods Of Increasing Workplace Productivity
The means and methods of increasing workplace productivity vary wildly, but many share the common theme of investing inwards. Investing time, energy, and targeted funds into the company often pays dividends in productivity and work ethic.
As productivity revolves around staffing activity, many firms opt to upgrade their time and attendance systems to support their workforce. Such upgrades allow business leaders to notice productivity slumps, take action to address them, and watch them change in real time. Efficient and effective working systems upgrade business conditions for employees and leaders alike. Revitalising company culture, increasing productivity, and investing in success create healthy, competitive, and sustainable firms for the future.