The need to ensure and enhance employee
productivity is a reality no business can ignore. If you run a business you'll
want to lean away from doing the mundane and routine when you can. However,
it's inevitable that you'll encounter factors that may weaken or extinguish
employee motivation and dampen productivity.
Obviously, you will need to mitigate these
productivity-killers. The first thing to do is identify these factors, so you
can consciously prevent them from emerging or aggravating. You should also be
able to suppress them if they already exist. However, avoidance is not enough.
A proactive stance is always preferable.
1. Get Rid of
Motivation Killers
As mentioned earlier, there is a need to
identify motivation killers in the workplace. A good manager will find ways to
carefully observe the work environment in search of problem areas that
adversely affect employee motivation. Typical motivation killers include toxic
people, abrasive personalities, lack of organizational vision, absence of
opportunities for professional development, poor communication systems,
autocratic management styles, and the feeling of lack of appreciation.
Addressing each of these requires a variety of approaches but there are ways to
kill these motivation-killers.
2. Motivate
through Gamification
Motivation is a very important factor in
ensuring productivity. Unmotivated employees get bored especially when they are
dealing with monotonous routines. Likewise, employees who lack motivation may
not have the enthusiasm to complete challenging tasks. One effective way of
motivating employees is through the use of gamification techniques. Tasks like
completing reports or contributing ideas for projects and policy changes can be
gamified to make them more appealing, exciting, or interesting.
Gamification involves the use of badges,
rewards, leader boards or rankings, points, challenges, and other game elements
to make repetitive and quantifiable tasks more engaging. Enterprise
gamification platforms like GameEffective can be integrated with existing ERP,
CRM or other enterprise applications, making it easier for employees to use
these and get ahead in the game. These can be readily deployed to add a
"play" dimension to various aspects of a business operation, like
sales and customer service.
3. Set Clear
Goals and Provide Feedback
Employees or personnel will be more motivated
if they know what they are expected to achieve. Clearly stating goals or having
a company vision provides guidance for everyone. Short-term goals, in particular,
are effective in encouraging employees to properly manage their speed in doing
tasks to meet targets. Additionally, it is important to provide feedback or
show that employees are being supervised. Accomplishments should be
acknowledged, while errors or failures in meeting targets should be promptly
addressed. Good management practices can enhance and help maintain employee
productivity.
4. Use
Technology Responsibly
Refusing to leverage technology could be
considered a grave mistake for any business. There are many technologies that
significantly increase productivity in a workplace. To emphasize, using
technology is not just about having computers and an Internet connection in the
office. It's also important to study and utilize different hardware and
software solutions that can improve employee productivity.
Collaborative applications like Asana can be
very effective in making employees more productive, especially for
organizations with geographically-distributed setups. Some employees do better
if they are allowed to work in locations they find more comfortable, such as
their homes. In other cases, travel is simply too expensive or time-consuming,
and telecommuting, remote working or even co-working are viable options.
Increased mobility can break down barriers to
productivity. Mobile devices enable access to communication and collaboration
tools, as well as work-related documents and information. It is important,
however, to prevent overly thinning the line between personal and professional
lives. Work-life balance should be respected.
5. Set
Standards and Provide Skills Development
In every business, it is important to
establish standards. Employees should be familiar with what the company expects
from them. They need to know what they should be doing as well as their
assigned roles. Without clear or explicit expectations, people tend to find
excuses when they fail to achieve targets. Be clear at the outset: define what
you expect of everyone, and how you expect people to perform their assigned tasks
and responsibilities.
Moreover, address the aspirational needs of
employees by providing opportunities for developing skills or advancing
professionally. Management should expect every employee to seek challenges, and
to not want to be stagnant. It's not enough that they have mastered the skills
needed to efficiently accomplish their current assignments. Let your employees
realize that there are other things they can do, so that they can progress to
higher positions. If you don't help employees develop professionally, that may
become motivation for them to seek a new company.
6. Communicate Effectively and
Efficiently
Communication, without a doubt, is a crucial
aspect of business operations. Without an effective system of communication in
place, you will have difficulty in achieving goals and even in functioning
properly. Communication here, by the way, is not just the simple use of
devices, such as phones or verbal and written exchanges of information. It is
about designing and using communication systems that are appropriate for the
needs of a business or company.
Effective and efficient communication means
that employees should know the hierarchy and expertise within the company. They
should know who to reach out to regarding their concerns.
In terms of tools, take advantage of modern
platforms and applications available. Enterprise social networking tools such
as Yammer make it easier for employees to contribute to institutional knowledge
and help colleagues with onboarding. Cloud-based office suites like Office 365
help contribute to a culture of sharing and helping across the enterprise.
Maintaining and enhancing productivity in the
workplace is not always very easy to accomplish but it can also be boiled down
to some simple concepts. Here are three key things to remember: the need for
employee motivation, the proactive involvement of managers, and the use of
technologies and systems that greatly help employees in doing their work more
efficiently. If you thoughtfully execute plans with those concepts in mind, you
are on the right track. By JOHN
BOITNOTT
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